Numerical investigations on influence factors in topology optimization for catalytic microreactors

Abstract

This article is mainly to study the reaction performance of microreactor by topology optimization method. The influence of the shape of reaction region and reaction parameters on the catalytic microreactors is studied by numerical simulation. It can be found that the circular reaction region is more conducive to catalytic reaction, the square reaction region is next best reaction region shape, and the ellipse reaction region has the worst catalytic effect. When D = 1e⁻¹⁰, P = 0.25, K_a=1, D_a=1e⁻⁴, the catalytic reaction performance is better, and the change of K_a has a great influence on conversion rate. The catalyst distribution obtained by topology optimization method will be helpful to the study of catalytic microreactor in the future. Researchers can use similar catalyst distributions to improve microreactor performance.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Catalytic reaction
• catalytic microreactors
• topology optimization
• numerical simulations

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by LiaoNing Revitalization Talents Program(XLYC1907122), Liaoning Natural Science Foundation(2019-MS-169, 2019-BS-123), Chunhui Plan of Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China(2020). We sincerely thank Prof. Chong Liu for his kind guidance.