Microstructured FBMRs

Therefore, installing more membranes per unit of volume seems to be the only reasonable way to improve the membrane fluxes. Installing more membrane area (thus more membranes) will drastically reduce the space between membranes where the catalyst is suspended in fluidization. For instance, using planar membranes (Mahecha-Botero et al., 2008) close to each other would result in a small compartment that can be seen as microstructured FBMR as theoretically studied by Wang et al. (2011). Their simulation study has also elucidated that in these small confinements the turbulent fluidization regime (with anticipated improved mass transfer characteristics) can be achieved at lower superficial gas velocities. 

It can be foreseen that microstructured FBMRs will have different design paradigms compared to conventional fluidized bed (membrane) reactors. It is for this reason that we also highfight several design aspects of these microreactors in this chapter. 

For this section, we shift our focus to microstructured FBMRs. It will be investigated whether it is indeed possible to overcome the external mass transfer bmitations by using smaller compartments even in case a large amount of gas is extracted through the membranes. Is it possible to operate smaller sized reactors in the turbulent regime in order to circumvent the detrimental formation of densified zones. And finally, is it possible to operate these reactors with state-of-the-art membranes without inducing mass transfer limitations (due to densified zones) ... 

Avoiding Densified Zones in Bubbling Microstructured FBMRs... 

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