Numerical Modeling of Micromixing Performance of Five Generic Microchannel Reactors using Villermaux/Dushman Competing Test Reaction

Abstract

Microchannel reactors, known as high-process intensification reactors, are utilized in various fields due to their intensive micromixing performance, which is crucial for fast chemical reactions. The work presented here depicts the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling of five generic microchannel reactors (MCRs), namely T-square, T-trapezoidal, Y-rectangular, concentric, and caterpillar designs based on the experimental published data of the parallel competing Villermaux-Dushman reaction. The main objective of this study is to numerically quantify the effects of the total liquid flow rate (1-18 mL/min), micromixer dimension (150-1600 µm) and configuration on the values of the pressure drop, energy dissipation, mixing time, and segregation index (XS).The CFD results revealed that under constant concentrations of the reactants ( , , , = 0.091, 0.0224, 0.016, 0.0033 M), the dissipation rate intensified with increasing the total flow rate but weakened with the change in symmetry and the channel diameter. Further, the estimated values of the segregation index illustrated that the caterpillar design could bring about a reasonable enhancement in micromixing performance with energy dissipation (ε) and segregation index of 1335700 W/kg and 0.0024, followed by T-square and Y-rectangular with Xs~ 0.0061 and 0.0161, respectively. The low values of mixing time for caterpillar MCR were found in the range of 0.01-0.1 s for liquid flow rates of 1-18 mL/min.

Keywords

• cfd
• microchannel reactor
• micromixing
• segregation index
• villermaux/dushman reaction