Title:
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Development of an in-situ spatially resolved technique to investigate catalysts in a plug flow reactor
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This thesis presents, in detail, all the steps of the development of a new in-situ spatially resolved
method to probe gas phase concentrations and temperature with minimum invasiveness.
From the literature review, it was noted that no techniques developed to date were
designed to investigate packed powdered catalyst beds which simultaneously obtain the gas
concentrations and the temperature profile.
Within this thesis, details of the development of a prototype and further optimisation of a
spatial resolution technique for packed powdered catalyst beds were disclosed. The technique
was designed to have negligible impact on the packed powdered catalyst bed with the use of the
smallest equipment available.
Significantly, a number of validation tests of the spatially resolved technique were
conducted and the results proved that the technique was working under different experimental
conditions. The results of these validation tests highlighted the improvements of the optimised
spatial resolution system, which provided twice as many sampling points as the prototype, as
well as the additional benefit of simultaneous temperature recording.
Additionally, the invasiveness of the spatially resolved technique was investigated using
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD); more precisely the sampling capillary was found to have
negligible impact on the packed catalyst bed during the experiment. Furthermore, the results
obtained experimentally have been compared with simulations using a micro kinetic model. The
results obtained showed that a hybrid model (simulated concentrations and experimental
temperature) allowed a more accurate picture of the phenomena occurring in the packed catalyst
bed which was one of the initial aims of the development of the spatially resolved technique.
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