(150b) Microwave Heating of Packed Bed Reactors
AIChE Annual Meeting
2019
2019 AIChE Annual Meeting
Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division
Modeling and Analysis of Chemical Reactors I: Steady-State Behavior
Monday, November 11, 2019 - 12:50pm to 1:10pm
In this work, we develop a MW reactor setup to systematically study the key descriptors that influence the MW heating energy efficiency and inhomogeneous temperature distribution of a packed bed reactor using COMSOL multi-physics simulations. Simple machine learning methods show that the energy efficiency and hot spot generation in a packed bed rector under microwave irradiation are greatly influenced by tunable MW inputs, such as power and frequency, various properties of catalytic particles, such as the complex permittivity, and the bed porosity. For example, the microwave heating energy efficiency is increased by increasing the microwave frequency, microwave power, and loss factor. We identify materials and conditions that can generate hot spots. Such âhot spots can affect the catalytic performance (conversion and selectivity) of gas/solid reactions. This work introduces for the first-time machine learning to optimize energy efficiency and deliver novel MW reactor designs with significant energy savings.