(83ab) Fluid Flow in Deep Microchannel Reactor (FMR) for Pilot Scale Production

Fluid flow in a deep microchannel reactor (FMR) was investigated using computational fluid dynamics. As the name implies, FMR consists of deep microchannels which is typicaly in the order of ten centimeters. Theoretically the throughput of FMR is proportional to the channel depth, and thus a 1000 fold increase in the production rate can be easily achieved. The pressure drop can also be reduced by employing a deep microchannel. However, since FMR employs very deep channels, a care must be taken to suppress flow maldistribution that drastically decreases the performance of FMR as a microchannel reactor. We have already reported on the preliminary results on the channel structure in which flow maldistribution can be suppressed. The results were validated in an experiment using a FMR with a depth of 2.6 cm

In this work, we aim at desiging a pilot scale production plant using a FMR. The target production rate is 1000 tpa. The "depth" of FMR is more than 30cm. A computational fluid dynamics simulation was conducted to investigate the fluid flow in FMR with a depth of 30cm, and the effect of fabrication error on the flow distrubtion was studied.