2001 Volume 34 Issue 11 Pages 1332-1340
Effects of catalyst amount, membrane tube diameter, and permeation rate on porous membrane reactor performance were investigated through experiments and simulations. Porous Vycor glass membrane reactors were used in the experiment. To study the effect of catalyst amount, permeation side of a membrane reactor was filled with the same catalyst as that used in the feed side, i.e. 0.5 wt% Pt/Al2O3. The Ω, that is, a volume fraction of a catalyst in the permeation side was varied from 0% to 100%. It was observed that overall conversion increases with the Ω value. To study the effect of membrane tube diameter on the performance of a modified porous membrane reactor (MPMR), experiment and simulation using different membrane tube diameters were conducted. The results show that there are optimum membrane tube diameter to achieve maximum conversion. It also reveals that in an MPMR, membrane surface area and ratio of VT/VS are more important than membrane thickness. In order to study the effect of permeation rate, some simulations were conducted. The results show that permeation rate significantly affects the performance of porous membrane reactors. By designing appropriate parameters, it is possible to achieve high purity organic product in the permeation side of MPMR.
