Coupling Euler–Euler and Microkinetic Modeling for the Simulation of Fluidized Bed Reactors: an Application to the Oxidative Coupling of Methane

[Image: see text] We propose a numerical methodology to combine detailed microkinetic modeling and Eulerian–Eulerian methods for the simulation of industrial fluidized bed reactors. An operator splitting-based approach has been applied to solve the detailed kinetics coupled with the solution of multiphase gas–solid flows. Lab and industrial reactor configurations are simulated to assess the capability and the accuracy of the method by using the oxidative coupling of methane as a showcase. A good agreement with lab-scale experimental data (deviations below 10%) is obtained. Moreover, in this specific case, the proposed framework provides a 4-fold reduction of the computational cost required to reach the steady-state when compared to the approach of linearizing the chemical source term. As a whole, the work paves the way to the incorporation of detailed kinetics in the simulation of industrial fluidized reactors.