A Niae - Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.
D Salari - Department of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
S.A Hosseini - Department of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.

Simulation of gas catalytic oxidation of toluene on Cu-ZSM-5 catalyst was carried out using threedimensional( 3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Geometries of reactor and catalyst were designed by gambit software and simulation of catalytic process was done in Fluent 6.2. Simulation was presented for model geometry of 20 solid spheres in a tube with tube-to-particle diameter ratio equal to 2. The results of simulation showed a good agreement with experimental results. CFD allowed to obtain a more accurate view of the fluid flow and heat transfer mechanism present in the fixed bed equipment. Furthermore, the concentration of species along reactor were predicted using CFD. This study revealed CFD ability as best tool allow the implementation of detailed homogenous and heterogeneous reaction scheme even for complex catalyst geometries.

CFD, VOC, catalytic oxidation, Cu-HZSM-5, toluene