Numerical analysis of fractal catalyst structuring in microreactors

Heterogeneous catalysis finds applications in the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, automobile (catalytic converters), biotechnology and other industries. Fractal catalyst structuring was studied to reduce the amount of active catalyst required in micro-scale devices. The effectiveness of "fractal structuring" for systems which are neither diffusion nor reaction limited was studied; specifically for the realistic micro-channel geometries. The first fractal division was obtained by removing the central one-third of the catalyst, leaving third of the catalyst each on either side of the non-catalytic zone. For the second fractal division, a third of the catalyst was removed from each of the remaining segments. The increase in mass flux at singularities was less significant in the tubular confined geometry. Consequently, unlike the open geometry, conversion decreased moderately with fractal structuring, even for diffusion limited systems. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 19th International Congress of Chemical and Process Engineering and 7th European Congress of Chemical Engineering (Prague, Czech Republic 8/28/2010-9/1/2010).