Dr Kevin van Eeten of Flowid shows how highly exothermic reactions can be carried out in intensified conditions on the SpinPro reactor.

Heterogeneous catalysis is of paramount importance in chemical industry, but it often involves incorporating difficult and mass transfer limited unit operations. The SpinPro Reactor has proven itself to drastically increase solid-liquid mass transfer rates, while simultaneously tackling the problems involved in downstream solids handling.

The SpinPro reactor has recently been used on-site. Goal of this project was to experimentally determine the performance of the SpinPro reactor for a multiphase reaction between a gas and two liquid phases, one aqueous and one oil. The rate-limiting step in this process was believed to lie in the mass transfer steps; an ideal opportunity to put the SpinPro reactor to the test.

The SpinPro is unique in the field of emulsification as it allows for a high degree of freedom on the amount of shear that is applied to the emulsifying fluids, independent of the total throughput through the system. This results in constant droplet size distribution at the outlet with a high degree of control. Recently, Flowid has demonstrated that emulsions can readily be made with droplet sizes that can be fine-tuned down to 8 μm in diameter by simply increasing the disc speed up to 3800 rpm. There was no significant effect of flow rate on the droplet size distribution when increasing the total throughput from 50 L/hr to 100 L/hr. Due to the modular design of the SpinPro, this absence of influence is expected to persist for flow rates of up to 600 L/hr, being the maximum design capacity of the SpinPro R300.