FLUX RELATIONS UNDER REACTIVE CONDITIONS

Chapter 9. FLUX RELATIONS UNDER REACTIVE CONDITIONS 

Though a porous medium may be described adequately under non-reactive conditions by a smooth field type of diffusion model, such as one of the Feng and Stewart models, it does not necessarily follow that this will still be the case when a chemical reaction is catalysed at the solid surface. In these circumstances the smooth field assumption may not lead to appropriate expressions for concentration gradients, particularly in the smaller pores. Though the reason for this is quite simple, it appears to have been largely overlooked, 

To be specific let us have in mind a picture of a porous catalyst pellet as an assembly of powder particles compacted into a rigid structure which is seamed by a system of pores, comprising the spaces between adjacent particles. Such a pore network would be expected to be thoroughly cross-linked on the scale of the powder particles. It is useful to have some quantitative idea of the sizes of various features of the catalyst structur so let us take the powder particles to be of the order of 50p, in diameter. Then it is unlikely that the macropore effective diameters are much less than 10,000 X, while the mean free path at atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature, even for small molecules such as nitrogen, does not exceed 

In non-reactive conditions concentrations in the gaseous phase might be expected to vary significantly only over distances large compared with the powder particle size, and consequently it should be possible to define 

When a chemical reaction takes place at the solid surface, we expect a smooth variation in gas composition in the macropores on a scale comparable with the whole pellet, provided the reaction rate is not too high. 

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Equation (9.23) is to be compared with the Feng and Stewart relations (9.4) which describe the fluxes in the same system under non-reactive conditions, The factor (BA coth BA - 1) has the form sketched in Figure 9.2. From the definition of B given by equation (9.19) it is seen chat 9- 0 as and each tend to zero, their ratio remaining equal to Che... 

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