Liquid/Liquid Slug Flow Capillary Microreactor

• Published in: Chemical engineering & technology 2011-03, Vol.34 (3), p.353-360
• Main Authors: Ufer, A., Mendorf, M., Ghaini, A., Agar, D. W.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Capillary reactor; Catalysis; Catalytic reactions; Chemical engineering; Chemistry; Exact sciences and technology; General and physical chemistry; Heat and mass transfer. Packings, plates; Hydrodynamics of contact apparatus; Liquid-liquid slug flow; Numbering-up; Reactors; Suspension catalysis; Theory of reactions, general kinetics. Catalysis. Nomenclature, chemical documentation, computer chemistry; Wall film
• ISSN: 0930-7516; 1521-4125
• DOI: 10.1002/ceat.201000334

The liquid‐liquid slug flow capillary microreactor offers an excellent mass transfer performance for extraction and biphasic reactions. In combination with a simple phase separator based on wettability discrimination between the two liquids, it provides a powerful tool for process intensification and microscale processing. By new visualization techniques, the interfacial surface and slug vortex structures dictating inter‐ and intraphase mass transfer have been revealed to be more complex than previously assumed. Suspending fine catalyst particles in one phase of a two‐phase slug flow is an effective technique for using heterogeneous catalysts in microreactors, owing to the very good mass transfer characteristics and because catalyst recovery becomes simply a matter of separating the catalyst carrier phase from the reaction medium. To exploit the performance attributes of capillary microreactors at higher throughputs, distributor and control strategies for parallelisation were developed to provide a flow distribution uniform to within 1 % or less. Liquid–liquid slug flow in capillaries can be used to illustrate three fundamental aspects of microscale chemical engineering that have been somewhat neglected in the past: downstream processing, solids handling and numbering‐up.