Chemical Engineering Application of Transport Characteristics

摘要

The industrial application of porous solids is quite widespread. Porous heterogeneous catalysts, adsorbents and membranes are used in the chemical industry and biotechnology, porous materials are common in building engineering, porous catalysts form the basis of mufflers in cars, etc. The rates of processes taking place in the pore structure of these materials are affected or determined by the transport resistance of the pore structure. Inclusion of transport processes into the description of the whole process is essential when reliable simulations/predictions have to be made. Trends, in modern chemical/biochemical reaction engineering, point to utilization of more sophisticated and therefore more reliable models of processes. The basic idea is that the better the description of individual steps of the whole process the better its description and, perhaps, even extrapolation. Dependable process description forms the basis of process control and process optimization. For example, optimum pore structure of adsorbents, membranes, enzyme/cell supports or heterogeneous catalysts can be suggested which will guarantee best activity or selectivity. Similarly, optimum operating conditions can be found when the process description is based on as full as possible knowledge of the process steps.