Introduction

Many industrial applications such as filters, catalyst beds and packing, involve modeling the flow through porous media. This tutorial illustrates how to set up and solve a problem involving gas flow through porous media.

The industrial problem solved here involves gas flow through a catalytic converter. Catalytic converters are commonly used to purify emissions from gasoline and diesel engines by converting environmentally hazardous exhaust emissions to acceptable substances. Examples of such emissions include carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and unburned hydrocarbon fuels. These exhaust gas emissions are forced through a substrate, which is a ceramic structure coated with a metal catalyst such as platinum or palladium.

The nature of the exhaust gas flow is a very important factor in determining the performance of the catalytic converter. Of particular importance is the pressure gradient and velocity distribution through the substrate. Hence CFD analysis is used to design efficient catalytic converters. By modeling the exhaust gas flow, the pressure drop and the uniformity of flow through the substrate can be determined. In this tutorial, ANSYS FLUENT is used to model the flow of nitrogen gas through a catalytic converter geometry, so that the flow field structure may be analyzed.

This tutorial demonstrates how to do the following:

• Set up a porous zone for the substrate with appropriate resistances.

• Calculate a solution for gas flow through the catalytic converter using the pressure-based solver.

• Plot pressure and velocity distribution on specified planes of the geometry.

• Determine the pressure drop through the substrate and the degree of non-uniformity of flow through cross sections of the geometry using X-Y plots and numerical reports.