The Effective Flow Coefficient Design Method of Microwave-Assisted Catalytic Reactor for Gas Treatment

Abstract

Microwave heating is a promising technology widely used to enhance chemical processes in multiphase catalytic reactions. The design of the microwave reactor is crucial for microwave-assisted multiphase catalysis. However, assessing the reactor design's impact on catalytic performance is often based on experiments and experience. In this study, we propose a method based on multiphysics simulation to evaluate and guide the design and scale-up of microwave cavities. First, we conduct multiphysics calculations by establishing an enlarged microwave reactor model to obtain the heating situation and gas flow stats on the catalyst support. Subsequently, by integrating parameters such as flow rate, temperature, and effectiveness, we construct the effective flow coefficient (EFC) to characterize and guide the reactor's design quantitatively. Based on this method, we calculated four reactor models with different internal structures and obtained EFC values of 0.17, 0.19, 0.1, and 0.69, respectively. The results show that this method can quantitatively guide and optimize the reactor design from aspects such as the reactor structure, catalyst support structure, reactant feed configuration, and microwave feed configuration. This study contributes to the promotion of scale-up in microwave-assisted gas−solid catalytic reactors.