Resumen de Analysis of enhanced mixing by natural and forced convection with application to chemical reactor design

Clara Tatiana González Hidalgo

• We looked for new designs to enhance mixing on catalytic chemical reactors. Two models were proposed. The first one, used forced convection as the mixing enhancer and consisted of a stack of corotating disks with the catalytic coating on their surface and which were enclosed in a cilyndrical cavity. Two operation modes were studied for this type of reactor, discontinuous and semicontinuous one. In the semicontinuous mode a flux is fed to the reactor through the external wall. This configuration showed good efficiency compared to other type of reactors. The second model proposed used natural convection as the mixing enhancer. In this case a cubical cavity which had the catalytic surface on the bottom wall, was heated from below which activated the convection in the system leading to the mixing of the fluid in it. It was seen efficiency is determined by flow and mass transfer within boundary layers regions.