Hydrodynamics and Mass Transfer of Multiphase Packed-Bed Microreactors

催化剂和反应性能的实验室研究通常是在比商业实践中小几个数量级的反应器中进行的。减少实验规模有几个好处，例如降低设备成本，减少材料数量和本质上降低安全风险。当缩小三相反应器时，由于主导力转向粘性和表面张力，流体动力学与工业和实验室反应器中的流体力学发生了显著变化。因此，传统规模滴床反应器的流体力学和相关文献不能外推。为此，本项目旨在开发连续流微流体系统，用于多相填充床反应器的流体动力学和传质行为的研究。新的芯片上分析技术，反应器表征将开发和用于表征反应器的性能。这将涉及使用光谱学来确定停留时间分布，其结果可用于确定轴向和径向色散特性，以及开发适用于微填充床反应器的传质相关性。模拟工具还将用于有效地设计用于流体动力学和传质目的的微反应器。

Laboratory studies of catalyst and reaction performance are routinely performed in reactors that are orders of magnitude smaller than those in commercial practice. Reducing the scale of experimentation has several advantages, such as lower equipment costs, lower material amounts and intrinsically lower safety risks. When scaling down three-phase reactors, the hydrodynamics change significantly to those in industrial and laboratory reactors due to a shift in the dominant forces to viscous and surface tension forces. As a result, the hydrodynamics and correlations available in the literature for conventional scale trickle-bed reactors cannot be extrapolated. To this end, this project seeks to develop continuous flow microfluidic systems for the investigation of hydrodynamic and mass transfer behaviour in multiphase packed bed reactors. Novel on-chip analytical technologies for reactor characterisation will be developed and used to characterise reactor performance. This will involve the use of spectroscopy to determine residence time distributions, the results of which can be used determine axial and radial dispersion characteristics as well as develop mass transfer correlations applicable to micro-packed bed reactors. Simulation tools will also be used to effectively design micro-reactors for hydrodynamic and mass transfer purposes.