Mass transfer simulation of biodiesel synthesis in microreactors

Hybrid Approach in Microscale Transport Phenomena: Application to Biodiesel Synthesis in Micro-reactors

“…The Generalized Integral Transform Technique (GITT) was employed to handle both the two-and three dimensional formulations of the complete mass transfer problem, eqs. (1) [67][68][69][70]. Both situations of a constant coefficients eigenvalue problem and the alternative of including the velocity profile in the eigenvalue problem formulation have been dealt with [69][70], with relative merits that shall be briefly discussed in what follows.…”

“…The findings presented are part of an ongoing collaborative research aiming to improve the design of the microreactors recently demonstrated for biodiesel synthesis [66], targeting residence times of around one minute or less. For this purpose, the hybrid approach has been employed throughout the development and design of this microfluidic system [67][68][69][70][71], then validated through experimental tests employing high speed and thermal imaging infrared cameras [72]. Advanced additive micro-manufacturing platforms were also used to propose a more economical fabrication of multiple microreactors to assemble a modular prototype [72].…”

“…Thus, the computational simulation is an important tool that helps to understand the physical-chemical phenomenon and, consequently, to determine the suitable conditions that maximize the conversion of triglycerides during the biodiesel synthesis. The mathematical model is obtained through a steady-state mass balance that considers diffusive-convectivereactive effects to describe the transesterification route for biodiesel synthesis in a microreactor of rectangular section [67][68][69][70][71][72], as represented in Figure 3. The dimensionless mass transfer equations for the species concentrations, considering second order consecutive elementary and reversible reactions preferably in the triglyceride phase, under isothermal conditions and with constant physical properties, can be written as:…”

Quantitative analysis of hydrodynamic effect on transesterification process in T-junction microchannel reactor system

“…The introduction of obstruction with different types of geometry such as triangular baffle (Santana et al, 2019b) or circular obstruction (Santana et al, 2018) further enhance the mixing of oil and alcohol in the microchannel reactor with the help of a CFD tool (Elsholkami et al, 2016). Some other numerical studies that include the mass transfer mechanism for transesterification process are also reported (Noriega et al, 2017;Pontes et al, 2016). However, most of the CFD analyses in the microchannels resulted in a stratified flow regime.…”

On the Thermal Performance of a Microparallel Channels Heat Exchanger

“…Novel microscale water cooling systems [3][4][5][6][7][8] can effectively regulate the photovoltaics cell temperature, thereby enhancing the cell energy efficiency [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. The heat extracted by the coolant can, for instance, be reused in food and pharmaceutical storage, through an absorption cycle microrefrigeration unit, such as for food preservation and storage of vaccines, in membrane-based water desalination processes to make saline water suitable for human and agricultural use, and in the efficient continuous synthesis of biodiesel [15][16][17][18][19][20].…”