Modeling of microreactors for ethylene epoxidation and total oxidation

Microreactors are especially well-suited for laboratory-scale studies of rapid exothermic reactions, because they have excellent mass and heat transfer characteristics. Two novel reactor models were used for plate microreactors, one for a washcoated reactor and the other one for a silver plate microreactor. The aim of this modeling study was to precisely explain both the concentration and the temperature dependencies of the reaction rates of ethylene oxide (EO) synthesis over a wide range of operating conditions (p, T, flows) by using all the extensive data generated with our microreactors. Microreactors are especially well suited for producing accurate kinetic data because of the uniformity of reaction conditions in the reactor system.