<p></p><p>The
emergence of a viral pandemic has motivated the transition away from
traditional, labor-intensive materials testing techniques to new automated
approaches without compromising on data quality and at costs viable for
academic laboratories. Reported here is the design and implementation of an
autonomous micro-flow reactor for catalyst evaluation condensing conventional
laboratory-scale analogues within a single gas chromatograph (GC), enabling the
control of relevant parameters including reactor temperature and reactant
partial pressures directly from the GC. Inquiries into the hydrodynamic
behavior, temperature control, and heat/mass transfer were sought to evaluate
the efficacy of the micro-flow reactor for kinetic measurements. As a catalyst
material screening example, a combination of four Brønsted acid catalyzed probe
reactions, namely the dehydration of ethanol, 2-propanol, 1-butanol, and the
dehydra-decyclization of 2-methyltetrahydrofuran on a solid acid HZSM-5 (Si/Al
140), were carried out in the temperature range 403-543 K for the measurement
of apparent reaction kinetics. Product selectivities, proton-normalized
reaction rates, and apparent activation barriers were in agreement with
measurements performed on conventional packed bed flow reactors. Furthermore,
the developed micro-flow reactor was demonstrated to be about ten-fold cheaper
to fabricate than commercial automated laboratory-scale reactor setups and is
intended to be used for kinetic investigations in vapor-phase catalytic
chemistries, with the key benefits including automation, low cost, and limited
experimental equipment instrumentation.</p><p></p>
Mass and Heat Transfer Coefficients in Automotive Exhaust Catalytic Converter Channels