Reactor optimization and process intensification of photocatalysis for capillary-based PMMA LSC-photomicroreactors

摘要

As a novel solar reactor, LSC-PhotoMicroreactor (LSC-PM, where LSC denotes luminescent solar concentrator) has shown great potential in efficient, safe and scalable solar production. However, the light-to-chemical energy conversion efficiency is still to be promoted to make LSC-PMs win over the conventional way of chemical production in industry. To this end, intensification of photon transfer and mass transfer was conducted for the present capillary-based PMMA (Polymethyl methacrylate) LSC-PM. A plate-capillary-plate bonding method was used to construct the capillary-based LSC-PM and the material of the capillary was optimized, so as to eliminate photon transfer loss as much as possible inside the photomicroreactor. Moreover, mass transfer was dramatically enhanced by packing microspheres into the capillary of the LSC-PM as indicated by residence time distribution measurement. When the packing (glass bead) size was 850 mu m with the capillary inner diameter 2 mm, near plug-flow performance was achieved and the reaction rate was accelerated by 2 times with the high reaction productivity maintained for the model photoreaction. The results obtained in this study not only help LSC-PM advance in respects of energy efficiency and reactor efficiency, but also offer a potential new direction towards the simultaneous intensification of mass and photon transfer for photocatalysis via a single method.