Novel design of a microstructured reactor allowing fast temperature oscillations

Two types of stainless steel microstructured reactors for catalytic gas-phase reactions have been developed and characterized with respect to their thermal behaviour under non-stationary temperature conditions. One of the reactors used (FTC-I) allowed periodic temperature changes up to 100K with a frequency of 0.05 Hz. However, a broad temperature gradient of 80K developed inside the reactor. A second reactor (FTC-II) enabled periodic temperature variations of maximum 60K with a frequency of 0.06 Hz while avoiding temperature non-homogeneity. The CO oxidation taken as a test reaction was carried out over a Pt/Al2O3 catalyst in the FTC-II reactor. In this way it was possible to study the effect of non-stationary temperature conditions on the reactor performance. A significant increase in CO conversion was observed with periodic temperature cycling as compared to values obtained under steady-state conditions.