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Consideration of the Effect of Irregular Catalytic Active Component Distributions in Mesopores – Extension of a Model for Wall Catalyzed Reactions in Microchannel Reactors
Author(s) -
Platzer B.,
Xu Y.,
Roßmann T.,
Födisch R.,
Hönicke D.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
chemical engineering and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.403
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1521-4125
pISSN - 0930-7516
DOI - 10.1002/ceat.200301702
Subject(s) - microchannel , mesoporous material , catalysis , diffusion , extrapolation , yield (engineering) , component (thermodynamics) , chemistry , materials science , mechanics , microreactor , chemical engineering , thermodynamics , composite material , nanotechnology , physics , organic chemistry , mathematics , engineering , mathematical analysis
Data available from the literature and experimental results have shown that the distribution of the catalytic active components can be irregular already for fresh catalysts. The determination of the local concentrations of the catalytic active components using wavelength dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy confirms this for microstructured wafers used in microchannel reactors. Considering this nonuniform distribution, the used model gives the relation between the local concentration profiles of the reactants inside the pores and the product yield in the entire pore. These results were used in an equation for the diffusion flux at the pore mouth, which is useful for a microchannel model developed in a recent paper [1]. The theoretical considerations deal with cylindrical pores with known reactant concentrations at the pore mouth and known distribution of the catalytic active component within the pore. Beside numerical results, some analytical solutions with low mathematical expense, applicable to special cases, are discussed. The nonconsideration of the irregular distribution of the catalytic active component can be the reason for difficulties during the extrapolation of experimental results to slightly different conditions and can have a great influence on the reaction results. The regarded examples are typical of wall‐catalyzed reactions in microchannel reactors with mesopores.