Calculation of the Optimal Macropore Size in Nanoporous Catalysts and Its Application to DeNOx Catalysis

Macropores act as broad highways for molecules to move in and out of a nanoporous catalyst. The macropore “distributor” network in such a hierarchically structured porous catalyst, containing both nanopores and macropores, is optimized with the aim to find the optimal effectiveness factor, ηopt, of a single reaction with general kinetics in the catalyst. Molecular diffusion is assumed to dominate transport in macropores. It is found that the ηopt−Φ0 relation qualitatively recovers the universal η−Φ relation when the generalized distributor Thiele modulus, Φ0, is defined in a way analogous to the generalized Thiele modulus, Φ, but using the molecular diffusivity in the macropores rather than the effective diffusivity in the nanopores. This is because the concentration gradient inside the optimal hierarchically structured, porous catalyst exists only in one principle direction (e.g., the radial direction in a spherical catalyst particle), and molecular diffusion in the macropores dominates the transport pro...