High‐throughput microporous tube‐in‐tube microreactor as novel gas–liquid contactor: Mass transfer study

Abstract

AbstractHigh‐throughput microporous tube‐in‐tube microchannel reactor (MTMCR) was first designed and developed as a novel gas–liquid contactor. Experimentally measured kLα in MTMCR is at least one or two orders of magnitude higher than those in the conventional gas–liquid contactors. A high throughput of 500 L/h for gas and 43.31 L/h for liquid is over 60 times higher than that of T‐type microchannel. An increase of the gas or liquid flow rate, as well as a reduction of the micropore size and annular channel width of MTMCR, could greatly intensify the gas–liquid mass transfer. The interfacial area, α, in MTMCR was measured to be as high as 2.2 × 105 m2/m3, which is much higher than those of microchannels (3400–9000 m2/m3) and traditional contactors (50–2050 m2/m3). The artificial neural network model was proposed for predicting α, revealing only an average absolute relative error of <5%. © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2011