Chemical reaction engineering

Chemical reaction engineering is an engineering discipline that deals with the exploitation of chemical reactions on a commercial scale. Therefore, successful design of chemical reactors requires understanding of chemical kinetics as well as such physical processes as mass and energy transport. However, the Group research activities are focused on the following areas: (i) Catalytic and non-catalytic wet oxidation, (ii) Liquid-phase methanol synthesis, (iii) Catalytic de-nitrification, and (iv) Fuel cells. The activities in wet oxidation processes are either aimed at the fundamental aspects, or at the development of new catalyst as well as new reactor systems. In the first efforts the lumped TOC kinetics in different reactors (batch and CSTR) are studied, whereas in the second we are looking for active catalysts and optimal design of two-phase wet oxidation reactors. Liquid-phase methanol synthesis is studied in a slurry reactor as well as in a trickle bed reactor, mainly from the fundamental point of views. The rate of methanol formation in slurry reactor is studied under both, the steady state and dynamic (unsteady-state) operation aimed at the development of rate equation that can be used in modeling trickle bed reactor. We are interested in particular to employ the relative permeability concept for the design of trickle bed reactors. Catalytic de-nitrification of drinking water is an alternative to the biological digestion because they both, when compared with some other techniques, do not produce wastewater. The catalytic process employs non-soluble noble metals as a catalyst and is carried out at ambient temperature and pressure. In this area the main effort is concentrated into searching for a new efficient catalytic system (e.g. bimetallic) and for the optimal reaction conditions at which the process can be efficiently carried out on a commercial scale. A fuel cell is an electrochemical reaction system in which chemical energy is transformed with high efficiency directly to electrical current. In a low-temperature fuel cell our main objective is to optimize its performance by using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study.