Journal of Chemical Engineering & Process Technology
Open Access

Abstract

Reactor Performance and Design Concept in Additively Manufactured Milli-Scale Reactors

Tuomas Koiranen, Mihret Woldemariam and Antti Salminen

Millireactor or minireactor technology in small scale production has gained increasing attention in microreactor technology research because high pressure drops, unequal flow distribution into micrometer scale channels, and channel blocking can be reduced in larger scale. In this work, additive manufacturing suitability for reactors has been studied based on reactor surface properties. Mixing and heat transfer have vital role in reactor design when exothermic and fast or relatively fast reactions are considered. Here, mixing efficiencies of Hartridge-Roughton reactor and its modifications have been evaluated. The surface roughness and surface rugosity had influence in experimentally determined mixing efficiencies which made a clear difference when comparing simulation results. Reactor temperature fields were experimentally measured with IR camera technology as well as the heat flows were simulated for instantaneous acid-base neutralization reaction. The milli-scale mixer design cycle consisting Computational Fluid dynamics (CFD), additive manufacturing and experimentation is proposed. The proposed methodology is geometry independent and millireactor design steps here are discussed in detail. The design tasks are introduced for illustrating the proposed design concept for reactor geometry optimization.