Design,Simulation And Manufacture Of The Novel Configuration Continuous-flow Reactor

It’s of great importance to boost the economic benefits of the chemical industry and to reduce environmental pollution in the mean of utilizing continuous-flow reactors to produce chemicals,which is not only a research hotspot of chemical engineering but also the development direction.As a kind of continuous-flow reactor,the microreactor has excellent mass and heat transfer performance and has been widely used in various organic synthesis reactions.However,the small channel size of the microreactor limits the flow flux,resulting in the big challenge of large-scale industrial application of the microreactors.In this paper,a high-throughput continuous-flow reactor(HTCR)was designed based on the idea of embedding three-dimensional spiral components in the channel using the swirling shear characteristics of the flow.With the condition that the reactor maintains high heat transfer and mixing performance,the flux is increased by 1 to 3 orders of magnitude compared with common microreactors,which provides a new idea for the low-cost operation of continuous production of fine chemicals.In this paper,the design,flow,heat transfer,mixing,reaction and structure preparation of HTCR were systematically studied.The contents include the following aspects:(1)The geometric structure and partial details of the reactor were described,and the five main functional characteristics of the reactor were summarized:high mixing efficiency,high heat transfer efficiency,high throughput,strong scalability,and low pressure drop.(2)The reactors with different materials were successfully manufactured by using 3D printing technology,and the gas tightness detection met the design requirements.(3)The flow and heat transfer characters of the reactor were studied.It was found that there were a lot of secondary flows in the radial direction,which can reduce the thermal boundary layer and benefit the temperature uniformity.Compared with the empty tube,the performance evaluation criterion(PEC)of the SK structure reached 1.6,which effectively enhanced the heat transfer.(4)The effects of Reynolds number,Prandtl number,length diameter ratio of the helical plate and twist angle of the helical plate on Nusselt number and friction coefficient were investigated,and the correlation equations were obtained by numerical fitting.(5)The fluid mixing and liquid-liquid dispersion performance of the reactor were studied.It was found that the SK structure has a high mixing efficiency,and the fluids have been mixed well when passing through 4 helical plates from the inlet.For the liquid-liquid two-phase flow system,the effective interfacial area was 590～1870 m2/m3.(6)The feasibility of applying HTCR to the synthesis reaction of ethyl diazoacetate(EDA)and of n-octanol polyoxyethylene ether was studied.In the former reaction,the highest yield 99.1%was reached at the residence time of 28s.Showing that applying HTCR has a significant advantage over the stirring and dropping operation.In the latter reaction,compared to the traditional semi-continuous operation,the n-octanol polyoxyethylene ether product exhibits a narrower distribution of polymerization degree and lower initial alcohol residue,presenting higher product quality and space-time yield.