Fluid mixing and particle suspension in a novel microreactor

On catalysis and reaction engineering, new reactor designs at a micro scale are desirable, which could guarantee a scale-down of the production of high valuable products, decreasing the reagents needs and the industrial unit space requirements. Thus, a new reactor design should guarantee a good fluid mixing for applications on the manufacture of specialty chemicals but also be able to keep particles suspended, with a high range of densities for several industrial purposes such as combinatorial (homogenous or heterogeneous) and high-throughput screening catalysis. Furthermore, sequential reactions are of frequent use in these kinds of industries and a single reactor volume able to perform different reactions would be very useful. A novel continuous reactor composed of micro scaled tubes and based on oscillatory flow technology is presented as a new solution for those industrial applications. Since the early 1990s, studies have shown that periodically spaced orifice baffles along the length of a tube, with a net flow coupled with a reversing oscillatory component of the correct magnitude, give high fluid mixing and narrow residence time distribution (Brunold

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