Scalable Rapid Prototyped Porous Reactors for Liquid-liquid Reactions
Simon Kuhn, Associate Professor, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
For biphasic transformations, packed beds represent a versatile reactor system to improve mixing
and mass transfer. However, the main drawbacks limiting their use, especially
for scale-up applications, are their large associated pressure drop and flow
mal-distribution resulting in non-uniform contact time. An alternative to
overcome these drawbacks is the use of porous structures based on open cell
metal foams, which combine the improved transport processes of the micro-scale
with the throughput of milli-scale reactors [1]. In our previous work, we
have investigated liquid-liquid flow hydrodynamics and mass transfer in various
structured and well-defined porous media similar to open cell foams [2].
We have found that depending on the fluid properties, different design
parameters of the porous structures play a crucial role in determining the
overall mass transfer performance.
We extend this study to investigate the heat
transfer performance of these structured porous reactors in single and two-phase
flow. Furthermore, we apply these designed porous reactors for the amination
reaction of aryl halides in the presence of a phase transfer catalyst. The
performance is assessed by comparison with an equivalent void volume
milli-scale packed bed reactor.
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