Translucent packed bed structures for high throughput photocatalytic reactors

Abstract

Translucent photocatalytic reactor structures are investigated as a possible alternative to numbering up as a method for the scale-up of microreactors. The structure and the light source design is elaborated to introduce this concept. The light field was characterized using a ray tracing algorithm. A rectangular reactor made from glass was designed using borosilicate spheres small enough to create an array of interconnected microchannels in the reactor. It was found that ray tracing can be used as a proper tool to easily design multiple-LED light sources and predict respective irradiance patterns. The performance of the reactor was assessed using the apparent rate constant, the space-time yield and the photocatalytic space-time yield, a recently introduced performance parameter which takes into account the lamp power and the reactor productivity. The apparent rate constant of the reactor for an incoming irradiance of 191Wm(-2) was found to be 0.82 min(-1), which is, to our knowledge, in the range of microreactors and 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than any high throughput immobilized reactor in literature. With a photocatalytic space-time yield of 0.657m(3) day(-1)m(-3) reactor kW(-1) our reactor was amongst the best reported performers in terms of productivity and energy efficiency. This performance is related to the high specific illuminated surface area of 4267m(2)m(-3) and high catalyst load of 1.9 g L-1.