(438b) Compact Heat Exchange Reactors for Process Improvement

Compact Heat Exchange Reactors for Process Improvement

Steven Vallee, Zhijun Jia

Chart Energy & Chemicals, Inc., 2502 Losey Blvd, La Crosse, WI 54601

Abstract

Compact Heat Exchange Reactors (CHER) have been used in various applications to improve process productivity, efficiency, and safety. CHER combines a compact heat exchanger with a chemical reactor in a single device. The structure consists of multiple alternating layers for reaction and cooling in intimate proximity, with each layer containing multiple mini-channels in the millimeters scale. This type of structure has excellent heat transfer capability and a large surface area to volume ratio that remains constant upon scale-up.

CHER are especially well-suited for many applications with highly exothermic or endothermic reactions, Process Intensification (PI), or mass transfer enhancement (extraction, absorption). This presentation will include a description of CHER and its features, and give multiple examples of the use of CHER to obtain process improvements including fixed-bed Fischer-Tropsch applications.