The influence of differences between microchannels on microreactor performance

Microstructured reactors most often contain a large no. of micrometer-sized, parallel channels, instead of a large undivided reaction vol. Individual microchannels behave as plug-flow reactors without significant axial dispersion and with excellent heat and mass transfer properties. However, since the reaction takes place in a large no. of parallel channels, all channels provide equal residence time and amt. of catalyst vol. These issues depend not only on the flow distributor design, but also, for example, on the manufg. tolerances. Correlations are derived to express the conversion of a multichannel microreactor explicitly as a function of the variance of a no. of reactor parameters, viz. the channel flow rate, the channel diam., the amt. of catalyst in a channel, and the channel temp. The influence of flow maldistribution on the overall reactor conversion is relatively small, while the influences of variations in the channel diam. and the amt. of catalyst coating are more pronounced. The model outcomes are also compared to exptl. results of two microreactors with different catalyst distributions, which show that the presented method is able to provide a quick, though rough estn. of the influence of differences between channels on microreactor performance. [on SciFinder (R)]