Scaling-Up of Photoreactors. Applications to Advanced Oxidation Processes

Abstract

The analysis and design of homogeneous or heterogeneous photochemical reactors is a particular case of a chemical reactor in which case the radiation contribution of the conservation energy principle has two special characteristics: (i) it will always be present regardless of the operating temperature and (ii) since the majority of these reactions are carried out at a fixed, close to room temperature, and, usually, maintained under isothermal conditions, the radiation contribution can be uncoupled from the thermal energy equation. With this consideration, the modeling of the reactor based on first principles requires as usual, the solution of the momentum, thermal energy, and multicomponent mass conservation equations adding, in a photoreactor, the radiation energy contribution, in terms of a photon balance. However, it must be taken into account along the design, that the main objectives of its inclusion are the resulting kinetics effects derived by its dominant participation in initiating the reaction.