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Abstract:  The engineering of the heat management in structured reactors is at the heart of process intensification. There is potential for significant enhancement of the radial heat transfer rates in technical multitubular packed-bed catalytic reactors with external cooling if the random packings of catalyst pellets are replaced by structured catalysts with thermally connected, highly conductive substrates. This seminar will review related past and recent work from our group addressing different substrate technologies (honeycombs, open-cell foams, 3D printed cellular structures), and demonstrating their application to key heat-transfer limited catalytic processes for the production of energy vectors. After briefly summarizing early modelling and lab-scale experimental studies, the first part of the seminar will introduce a proof-of-concept demonstration of conductive monolith catalysts, applied to the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) at the pilot reactor scale, within a collaboration with the Eni group. The presentation will then address the two latest generations of conductive cellular substrates, i.e. open-cell foams (aka sponges) and 3D printed periodic open cellular structures (POCS), and report their recent applications both to the highly exothermic FTS and to the highly endothermic steam reforming of methane (MSR). The final part of the seminar will discuss the potential of structured catalysts/reactors for using low-cost intermittent renewable electric energy to decrease the carbon footprint of endothermic chemical processes. In particular, the application of this concept to the steam reforming of natural gas would provide a twofold beneficial effect in terms of reduced CO2 emissions and increased process efficiency: preliminary results on the application of Joule heating for the MSR over wash coated SiC foams will be reported.

Biography:  Enrico Tronconi is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Department of Energy of Politecnico di Milano, Italy, where he leads the Laboratory of Catalysis and Catalytic Processes. He is the author of more than 300 refereed publications, with over 13000 citations (SCOPUS), and has given over 100 invited talks. His research interests concern the applications of Catalytic Reaction Engineering to environmental protection and to energy conversion. Enrico has investigated DeNOx aftertreatment technologies for the automotive sector during the last twenty years, in collaboration with leading Companies including e.g. Mercedes Benz. He is also active in the study of novel structured catalysts and reactors for process intensification: for his work on the distributed production of hydrogen and of clean synthetic fuels Enrico has been awarded both an Advanced Grant and a Proof of Concept Grant by the European Research Council: www.intent.polimi.it. He has organized and chaired the 26th edition of the International Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering in Florence, Italy (2018), and is Topical Editor for Chemical Reaction Engineering of Chemical Engineering Research and Design, the official journal of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering.