(370c) Ceramic Microchannel Modules for Heat Transfer and Process Intensification

Process intensification, which reduces the number of unit operations, offers sgnificant benefits in capital and operating costs for numerous industrial applications. For a variety of applications, ceramic materials offer benefits of corrosion resistance, high temperature durability (>>700C), and moderate thermal conductivites suited for high efficiency, compact, microchannel components.  Microchannel components offer high efficiency due to the small transport distances associated with them. This talk will describe the benefits of using ceramic, microchannel components for high efficiency heat exchange. In addition, examples of process intensification, such as combining partial oxidation and steam methane reforming in a single,ceramic, microchannel component will also be described.  The basic approach to designing and fabricating scaleable, modular, ceramic microchannel based devices for industrial scale processing will be described.