Kinetic Compatibility in Membrane Reactors

In order to achieve a significant effect for a membrane introduced into a reactor compared to a conventional reactor operation, there should be compatibility between fluxes passing the membrane and amounts consumed or produced during the chemical reactions. The specific amounts related to the simultaneous occurrence of M chemical reactions can be expressed, based on Eq. (1) as  

As mentioned earlier, different scales might be appropriate to quantify the reaction rates. With regard to transport through membranes, the membrane area Am is the appropriate scaling parameter. Thus, it holds that  

In the above, J represents the overall flux that might be composed for porous media out of different contributions (see for example Eqs. (23) and (24)). 

Provided that the required information is available, based on Eqs. (26) and (27) several important questions can be answered in an early development stage - for example, how much membrane area must be provided per scale of the reaction zone and, more generally, whether a more detailed investigation of the coupling reaction and mass transfer through the membrane considered is justified. 

Based on this approach, a useful estimation was provided recently [35]. With regard to the reaction aspect, achievable space-time yields (STY) of currently operated catalytic reactors were considered, whereupon Weisz defined the following window of reality [36]  

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