(509ch) Forced Thermal Oscillations in Catalytic Microreactors

Engineers and scientists have spent decades understanding catalysts and have generally come to the conclusion that kinetic rate optimization is fettered by the thermodynamics of the surface-species interactions. This limit is established by Sabatier’s rule and dictated by the scaling relations. While for years this limitation was taken at face value and deemed insurmountable, recent studies have begun finding creative ways to better optimize or even overcome this thermodynamic limitation. Reaction dynamics, or operating a reactor in a controlled, oscillatory fashion, is one such way that researchers have begun to overcome these limitations. In this work I developed a microreactor system capable of oscillating the reaction temperature at frequencies up to 10Hz through rapid resistive heating to explore the effects of dynamic systems.