Heterogeneous catalysis in pulsed-flow reactors with nanoporous gold hollow spheres

Falcucci, G.; Amati, G. (Cineca); Krastev, V.K.; Montessori, A.; Yablonsky, G.S.; Succi, S.

We present a novel application of the Lattice Boltzmann Method to the study of pulsed reactive flows in transitional Knudsen number regimes, namely 0.1<Kn<1.
We characterize the conversion efficiency of catalytic particles for different geometries and configurations, including single catalytic particle and nanoporous gold (npAu) spheres, within pulsed-flow reactors.
For all the explored configurations, the reactivity is found to increase with the Knudsen number of the flow, consistently with previous theoretical models and in reasonable agreement with experimental results in the literature.

Chemical Engineering Science
Volume: 166
Pages: 274-282
DOI: 10.1016/j.ces.2017.03.037
URL: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0009250917302038
Published: FEB 2017