Reaction-zone thickness premixed

Recall that we are assuming faem "C faff (°r fax, if turbulent flow). Anyone who has carefully observed a laminar diffusion flame - preferably one with little soot, e.g. burning a small amount of alcohol, say, in a whiskey glass of Sambucca - can perceive of a thin flame (sheet) of blue incandescence from CH radicals or some yellow from heated soot in the reaction zone. As in the premixed flame (laminar deflagration), this flame is of the order of 1 mm in thickness. A quenched candle flame produced by the insertion of a metal screen would also reveal this thin yellow (soot) luminous cup-shaped sheet of flame. Although wind or turbulence would distort and convolute this flame sheet, locally its structure would be preserved provided that faem fax. As a consequence of the fast chemical kinetics time, we can idealize the flame sheet as an infinitessimal sheet. The reaction then occurs at y = yf in our one dimensional model. 

The thickness of the flame zone can be estimated in a manner similar to that used for the premixed flame. A control volume is selected between the condensed phase surface and the point just before the reaction zone. This is the preheat zone , which is heated to 7j. 

It can be verified easily by experiments that in an ethylene-oxygen premixed flame, the average rate of consumption of reactants is abut 4 mol/cm s, whereas for the diffusion flame (by measurement of flow, flame height, and thickness of reaction zone—a crude, but approximately correct approach), the average rate of consumption is only 6 x 10 mol/cm s. Thus, the consumption and heat release rates of premixed flames are much larger than those of pure mixing-controlled diffusion flames. 

A novel application of a symmetric porous membrane as a catalyst carrier but not as a permselective barrier is to use the membrane itself as the reaction zone for precise control of the stoichiometric ratio [Sloot et al., 1990]. In this case, the reactants are fed to the different sides of the membrane which is impregnated with a catalyst for a heterogeneous reaction. The products diffuse out of the membrane to its both sides. If the reaction rate is faster than the diffusion rate of the reactant in the membrane, a small reaction zone or theoretically a reaction plane will exist in the membrane. An interesting and important consequence of this type of membrane reactor is that within the reaction zone the molar fluxes of the reactants arc always in stoichiometric ratio and the presence of one reactant in the opposing side of the membrane is avoided. The reaction zone can be maintained inside the membrane as long as the membrane is symmeuic and not ultrathin. Therefore, membrane reactors of this fashion are particularly suited for those processes which require strict stoichiometric feed rates of premixed reactants. A symmetric porous a-alumina membrane of 4.5 mm thick was successfully tested to demonstrate the concept [Sloot et al., 1990]. 

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