Development of a microchannel reactor model

The development and future wide-spread use of hydrogen fuel cells is inhibited by problems associated with hydrogen storage. A possible alternative is to store and then reform hydrocarbons to yield hydrogen in an on-board fuel processing system. Microchannel reactors have reduced mass and heat transfer limitations and are able to exploit fast intrinsic kinetics. Also, their high surface area to volume ratio reduces their size for a constant throughput, increasing their potential for miniaturised deployment. Current microchannel reactor models are either over simplified and neglect important subtleties, or too complex and are not usable for optimisation or sensitivity studies. The objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive model that obeys the phenomenological laws and is fast enough to be used for optimisation.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Chemical Engineering

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Parak, Muhammad

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Möller, Klaus

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/11615

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/11615