Fundamental principles of laboratory fixed bed reactor design

Abstract

A few important, foundational principles enable more effective discovery and development of heterogeneous catalysts. Numerous experts have documented and illustrated these principles over the past several decades, but many current practitioners fail to heed their sage advice. We revisit the concepts, which we categorize as the bed-scale phenomena of isothermality, contacting pattern ideality, isobaricity, and wetting efficiency, and the particle-scale phenomena of internal and external temperature and concentration gradients. In addition, we introduce a new public domain, web-based tool for quickly estimating the magnitude of the effects of these phenomena. Our objective is to motivate and equip our colleagues to teach these principles and to apply sound reaction engineering practices in their laboratory work.