The Jet Impact Reactor

The idea here is to force two streams, one of reactant, the other of a very hot heat carrier or catalyst, to collide at very high velocity and thereby mix intensely and react at high temperature. 

For an all-gas product, the product stream is rapidly quenched, while for a gas-solid product, a cyclone separates the two phases, after which the gas is rapidly cooled. By using the word rapidly we mean that the whole operation-mixing, reacting, separating and quenching—is done in 0.1 to 0.3 seconds. 

This type of reactor aims to challenge fast fluidization with its 1 to 10 second gas residence time as the prime reactor for the catalytic cracking of petroleum. The claim is that the higher cracking temperature and shorter residence time will give a very different—and better—distribution of reaction products. 

Another application is to ultrapyrolyze cellulose and other biomass wastes. Commercial tests show that one can transform about 75% of wood into oil, and about 70% of sawdust into oil-useful liquids having the consistency of light engine oil. Much research is proceeding on this application (from Bergougnou, 1998). 

Davidson, J. F., and Harrison, D., Fluidized Particles, Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 1963. 

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A high cooling surface area/reactor hold-up ratio is established in all sulphonation reactor systems. However, a peak temperature in the organic phase in the top region of all film reactors (and the Jet Impact Reactor) can not be avoided. 

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