Transient CFD Investigation of a Photocatalytic Multi-tube Reactor

S. Denys [1], J. van Walsem [1], J. Roegiers [1], S. Lenaerts [1],
[1] University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Published in 2016

As in industrial countries, people spend most of their time indoors and the stringent heat-insulation measures in combination with deficient ventilation have a negative impact on indoor air quality, one approach for abating indoor air pollution is the integration or retrofitting of a photocatalytic oxidation or PCO reactor into continuous flow. PCO technology is very cost-effective, efficient and it does not produce any waste streams. Determining the kinetic parameters describing the PCO reactions is an important step in the development of efficient air purification units, which can be difficult for unsteady continuous flow systems. In this work, we estimated the 'intrinsic' PCO related kinetic parameters (adsorption, desorption and photocatalytic rate constants as well as the total number of active sites), by comparing results from a COMSOL Multiphysics® model including kinetic rate expressions with experimental results using an optimization approach.