Russian chemists have developed a new improved catalyst

Tyumen and Novosibirsk chemists have built a geometric and mathematical model of a cartridge with fiberglass catalysts.

The vast majority of chemical processes require the use of catalysts. There are several hundred types of these science-intensive products on the market today. Catalysts are critical in oil refining processes. For the purpose of import substitution, the issue of creation and development of Russian catalysts becomes extremely important.

A promising solution in this area is the use of structured catalytic systems using a catalyst based on microfiber carriers made in the form of sheets of glass, mineral, ceramic, carbon, polymer, and other microfibers.

The article "CFD modeling of structured cartridges with glass fiber catalysts" by chemists of the Tyumen State University and the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis (Novosibirsk) was published in the journal "Research and design in the field of chemical engineering". Scientists have determined that the active components for such catalysts can be selected from a wide range of different noble metals or transition metal oxides, depending on the requirements of a particular process. The most widely used and well studied microfiber catalysts are glass fiber catalysts (GFCs).

Such catalysts have shown excellent performance in deep oxidation reactions of hydrocarbons, organic and organohalogen compounds, and so on. The features of microfiber catalysts include their original geometric shape, high mechanical strength and flexibility, as well as the possibility of organizing structured systems of various geometries and sizes, which makes it possible to implement fundamentally new versions of catalytic processes.

Scientists are convinced that in addition to experimental work, modern advanced modeling methods are needed, including those based on numerical fluid dynamic modeling (CFD). Such methods have become a very effective tool for theoretical studies of various catalytic systems such as monoliths, foams, mesh blocks. Although such work is already widely used in relation to other catalytic forms, the experience of CFD studies of microfiber catalysts is minimal. As a result, the model built by scientists turned out to be rather complicated, and the procedure for its modeling was resource-intensive.

The work carried out confirmed that the current model is applicable for research purposes. The totality of the results allowed scientists to consider the proposed model as proven, requiring further improvement of the parameters based on a wider array of experimental data.

The proposed model can be used to optimize the design parameters of existing GFC cartridges, as well as to develop new designs of GFC-based structured systems for various practical applications. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation as part of the state task for the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis and Tyumen State University.

Source: https://naked-science.ru/