Three-dimensional direct numerical simulation of turbulent channel flow catalytic combustion of hydrogen over platinum

The turbulent catalytic combustion of a fuel-lean hydrogen/air mixture (equivalence ratio ϕ = 0.24) was investigated by means of three-dimensional direct numerical simulation (DNS) in a platinum-coated plane channel with a prescribed wall temperature of 960 K and an incoming Reynolds number, based on the channel height, of 5700. Heat transfer from the hot catalytic walls laminarized the flow, as manifested by the progressive suppression of the high vorticity components of the flow aligned parallel to the channel walls at increasing streamwise distances. The impact of turbulence suppression on the mass transfer towards or away from the catalytic wall was subsequently assessed. Far upstream where high turbulence fluctuations persisted, the instantaneous local transverse gradient of the limiting hydrogen reactant (a quantity proportional to the catalytic reaction rate) as well as the instantaneous hydrogen concentration at the wall exhibited strong fluctuations by up to 300%, a result of finite-rate chemistry induced by the high inrush events towards the catalytic walls. Fourier analysis of the reaction rate fluctuations yielded peak frequencies of less than 1 kHz, values comparable to the thermal response frequencies of typical materials in commercial catalytic geometries. This has direct implications on the thermal stress of the reactor walls as well as on the decoupling between flow and solid thermal modeling currently used in practical catalytic reactors. Far downstream, the dampening of turbulence resulted in weaker hydrogen concentration fluctuations with nearly symmetric distributions. Finally, computed transverse turbulent species fluxes indicated inherent weaknesses of near-wall turbulence models in describing turbulent transport of species with disparate molecular diffusivities.