Open Access
ARTICLE
EFFECTS OF PHYSICOCHEMICAL PARAMETERS ON THE OPTIMIZED TOPOLOGY OF CATALYST IN MICRO REACTORS
Xun Liu, Li Chen*
, Wen-Quan Tao
Key Laboratory of Thermo-Fluid Science and Engineering of MOE, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an,
Shaanxi, 710049, China
* Corresponding Author: Email:
Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer 2020, 14, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.5098/hmt.14.16
Abstract
Fluid flow, mass transport and catalytic reaction in micro-reactors with catalyst are studied. Optimized structures of the catalyst generating the
maximum reaction rate are explored by numerically solving the reactive transport processes combined with topology optimization schemes in
COMSOL 5.3a. Effects of several physicochemical parameters including pressure drop, reaction rate constant, permeability of the porous catalyst and
radius of the reactor are investigated. Distributions of the optimized structures, velocity, pressure and concentration are discussed in detail. Results
show that the four physicochemical parameters have significant effects on the optimized structures of the catalyst obtained, indicating that generally
there does not exist a single structure that can result in the maximum averaged reaction rate under different conditions. Three indicators are evaluated,
including the averaged reaction rate, conversion ratio and the volume of catalyst. It is found that change trends of different indicators with different
physicochemical parameters sometimes are opposite, indicating great challenging for multiple objective optimization.
Keywords
Cite This Article
Liu, X., Chen, L. (2020). EFFECTS OF PHYSICOCHEMICAL PARAMETERS ON THE OPTIMIZED TOPOLOGY OF CATALYST IN MICRO REACTORS.
Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer, 14(1), 1–9.