Mesh Sensitivity Analysis of 3-Dimensional Microchannel for Hydrodynamics Simulation of One Step Urea Synthesis

Urea (NH2CONH2) as fertilizer is important for
agriculture industry. Potential one step urea synthesis patent
based on magnetically induced process can bypass ammonia step
by reacting H2, N2, and CO2 directly at ambient temperature and
pressure. At current state, the design of microreactor for one step
urea synthesis is not available. The fluid flow of the gases for
ammonia synthesis is simulated using in Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) approach. This study addressed the gap by
focusing on finding the optimum microchannel design for the
microreactor by varying geometry design. Mesh sensitivity study
is performed to ensure acceptable results. In the microchannel
where the scale is between micrometer to nanometer, the mesh
quality can be reached by varying number of nodes in every
geometry design. Investigating mesh quality can be obtained by
measuring element quality, using Richardson Extrapolation
method and Grid Convergence Index. The accepted mesh quality
of most the geometry design is between 900,000 and 1,300,000
elements.