Chemical Processing with Microdevices -Device / Plant Concepts, Selected Applications and State of Scientific / Commercial Implementation

摘要

In engineering science, chemical operation in microchannel-based systems is now beyond being a fashion, but becomes more and more accepted as novel discipline, not aside of but within existing engineering traditions (Hessel and Loewe, 2003, Ehrfeld et al., 2000, Ehrfeld et al., 1999b, Jensen, 2001). Chemical industry is open for the additional scale provided for processing and critically evaluating it, as a further down-sizing step following the sequence from conventional apparatuses to process-intensification equipment. Accordingly, a vast number of applications of microdevices are currently tested world-wide in the fields of mixing, powder / particle generation, organic chemistry, and catalyst testing / screening; selected examples of which are presented in this article.