Aims and Objective: In this work, the performance of a sodalite membrane reactor (MR) in the conversion of methanol to olefins (MTO process) was evaluated for ethylene and propylene production with in situ steam removal using 3-dimensional CFD (computational fluid dynamic) technique.

Methods: Numerical simulation was performed using the commercial CFD package COMSOL Multiphysics 5.3. The finite element method was used to solve the governing equations in the 3- dimensional CFD model for the present work. In the sodalite MR model, a commercial SAPO-34 catalyst in the reaction zone was considered. The influence of key operation parameters, including pressure and temperature on methanol conversion, water recovery, and yields of ethylene, propylene, and water was studied to evaluate the performance of sodalite MR.

Results: The local information of component concentration for methanol, ethylene, propylene, and water was obtained by the proposed CFD model. Literature data were applied to validate model results, and a good agreement was attained between the experimental data and predicted results using CFD model. Permeation flux through the sodalite membrane was increased by an increase of reaction temperature, which led to the enhancement of water stream recovered in the permeate side.

Conclusion: The CFD modeling results showed that the sodalite MR in the MTO process had higher performance in methanol conversion compared to the fixed-bed reactor (methanol conversion of 97% and 89% at 733 K for sodalite MR and fixed-bed reactor, respectively).

目的和目的：在这项工作中，使用 3 维 CFD（计算流体动力学) 技术。

方法：使用商用 CFD 软件包 COMSOL Multiphysics 5.3 进行数值模拟。在目前的工作中，有限元方法用于求解 3 维 CFD 模型中的控制方程。在方钠石 MR 模型中，考虑了反应区中的商业 SAPO-34 催化剂。研究了压力和温度等关键操作参数对甲醇转化率、水回收率以及乙烯、丙烯和水收率的影响，以评估方钠石 MR 的性能。

结果： 甲醇、乙烯、丙烯和水的组分浓度的局部信息通过提出的 CFD 模型获得。应用文献数据对模型结果进行验证，实验数据与CFD模型预测结果吻合较好。随着反应温度的升高，通过方钠石膜的渗透通量增加，这导致渗透侧回收的水流增加。

结论：CFD 建模结果表明，与固定床反应器相比，MTO 工艺中的方钠石 MR 具有更高的甲醇转化率（方钠石 MR 和固定床反应器在 733 K 时甲醇转化率分别为 97% 和 89% ）。