Published since May 1, 2003

International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering

ISSN: 1542-6580

Edited by: Hugo de Lasa, Charles Chunbao Xu

Impact Factor: 1.636

About this journal

Objective
The International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering covers the broad fields of theoretical and applied reactor engineering. The IJCRE covers topics drawn from the substantial areas of overlap between catalysis, reaction and reactor engineering. The journal is presently edited by Hugo de Lasa and Charles Xu, counting with an impressive list of Editorial Board leading specialists in chemical reactor engineering. Authors include notable international professors and R&D industry leaders.

Topics

Chemical reaction engineering
Single-phase and multi-phase reactor design
Catalytic reactors
Operation and control of chemical reactors
New chemical reactor concepts for green chemical processes
Fluid mechanics and fluid dynamics
Computational fluid dynamics
Low and high pressure and temperature chemical reactor operation.

Article formats
Original research and development articles, research and special events reports, book reviews etc.

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Rich publishing tradition at De Gruyter reaching 2002
One of the leading journals in chemical reactors engineering
Prestigious Editorial Board
Excellent and up-to-date research and development articles
Ahead of print publishing
Notable Authors: international professors from Imperial College London, the Norwegian School of Science and Technology, and Bayer Corporation

History

History
One issue/year, updated continuously
Content available since 2003 (Volume 1, Issue 1)
ISSN: 1542-6580

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Volume 20 Issue 11

November 2022

Publicly Available November 21, 2022

Frontmatter

Page range: i-ii

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Articles

March 21, 2022

Hydrodynamics and mixing performance in a continuous miniature conical counter-rotating twin-screw extruder

Sicheng Xin, Wenkai Cheng, Lisen Yang, Yaran Yin, Shichang Chen, Xianming Zhang, Wenxing Chen

Page range: 1117-1130

Abstract

The mixing performance in a miniature conical counter-rotating twin-screw extruder was investigated by means of experimental technique and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. An on-line experimental device based on the fluorescence detection was built to study the residence time distribution (RTD). Polypropylene was selected as the flow material and the blend of Polypropylene and anthracene was used as the tracer. This on-line detection device has good reproducibility. The hydrodynamics in the extruder was simulated by the finite element method (FEM) combined with the mesh superposition technique (MST). The particle tracking technique was carried out to evaluate the RTD and mixing efficiency. The effect of screw speed and feed rate on the hydrodynamics and mixing performance was investigated. The velocity magnitude and local shear rate tend to become smaller from inlet to outlet due to the decreasing diameters of screws. The mean length of stretch increases exponentially from inlet to outlet and the mean value of time averaged mixing efficiency remains positive along the axial direction.

April 11, 2022

High-efficiency, environment-friendly moss-enriched microbial fuel cell

Nurettin Çek, Ahmet Erensoy, Namık Ak, Ayhan Demirbas, Ahmet Orhan Gorgulu, Hasan Uslu

Page range: 1131-1140

Abstract

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) can be used to produce clean energy from organic wastes. Various biomasses for MFCs can be used as biofuel materials. Moss ( Bryophyta ) is a source of biomass materials and can be used as an alternative fuel for microbial fuel cells. In this study, moss-enriched MFCs were produced by using moss as a biofuel source and aluminum and silver as an electrode. As a result of the good electrochemical performance of the metal electrodes (aluminum and silver), higher power density than previous studies involving moss was obtained, with the highest power density in this study being 20 mW/m 2 . Moreover, in this study, bacterial activity, biofilm formation, soil utilization, pH change, and corrosion were investigated in MFCs and the effects of MFC on power density were discussed. The addition of soil increased the corrosion rate and internal resistance while reducing the power density. As a result of the addition of soil, the power density dropped to 16.13 mW/m 2 . The corrosion rate was lower than industrial corrosion. Changes in pH confirmed that organic material dissolved and chemical reactions took place. Scanning electron microscope (SEM)-Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analyzes showed the presence of Bacillus and Coccus bacteria species on the electrode surfaces. These bacteria were acted as biocatalysts by forming a biofilm on the electrode surfaces.

April 1, 2022

Applying metal coatings to dielectric materials by photochemical processes

Shayzada Koshkarbaeva, Vasilya Janpaizova, Kalamkas Amanbaeva, Malik Sataev, Perizat Abdurazova, Bagdagul Serikbaeva, Yerkebulan Raiymbekov

Page range: 1141-1147

Abstract

Photochemical processes in thin surface layers of solutions of compounds of the copper subgroup elements leading to the formation of dispersed metal particles on the surface of dielectrics are investigated. It is shown that dispersed particles of elemental gold are formed on dielectrics moistened with AuCl 3 solution and exposed to sunlight. At the same time, there is no need to use any chemical reducing agents. On cotton fabrics moistened with solutions of AgNO 3 , CuBr 2 , when exposed to sunlight, silver and copper monohalides are formed, respectively. These processes take place with the participation of terminal cellulose molecules and also do not require the use of chemical reducing agents. In addition, it was found that copper monohalides can be converted into elemental copper particles by a photochemical reaction involving ascorbic acid. Examples of metallization of a number of dielectrics using photochemical activation using sunlight are given.

April 14, 2022

The photocatalytic degradation kinetics of the anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen in aqueous solution under UV/TiO₂ system and neural networks modeling

M. Bennemla, S. Bouafia-Chergui, A. Amrane, M. Chabani

Page range: 1149-1161

Abstract

In this study, the kinetic degradation of the anti-inflammatory drug Ibuprofen in aqueous solution by heterogeneous TiO 2 photocatalytic was investigated. The data obtained were used for training an artificial neural network. Preliminary experiments of photolysis and adsorption were carried out to assess their contribution to the photocatalytic degradation. Both, direct photolysis and adsorption of Ibuprofen are very low-efficient processes (15,83% and 23,88%, respectively). The degradation efficiency was significantly elevated with the addition of TiO 2 Catalyst (>94%). The photocatalytic degradation followed a pseudo-first-order reaction according to the L-H model. The hydroxyl radicals and photo-hole (h + ‏) were found to contribute to the Ibuprofen removal. The higher the initial concentration of Ibuprofen resulted in the lower percentage of degradation. This can be credited to the fact that the created photon and radicals were constant. The higher the initial concentration of Ibuprofen the fewer radicals were shared for each Ibuprofen molecular and so the lower percentage of degradation. The maximum photoactivity from the available light is accomplished when the concentration of catalyst reaches to 1 g/L (0.8 g), which was adopted as the optimal amounts. Compared to the removal of ibuprofen, the mineralization was relatively lower. This decrease is due to the organic content of the treated solution, which is mainly composed of recalcitrant intermediate products. The network was planned as a Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm with three layer, four neurons in the input layer, fourteen neurons in the hidden layer and one neuron in the output layer (4:14:1). The artificial neural network was trained until the MSE value between the simulated data and the experimental results was 10 −5 . The best results ( R 2 = 0.999 and MSE = 1.5 × 10 −4 ) were obtained with a log sigmoid transfer function at hidden layer and a linear transfer function at output layer.

April 20, 2022

Pseudo-dynamic optimisation and study of the effect of gradual and sudden changes on the operating conditions of a naphtha catalytic reforming unit

Farangis Fallah Mehneh, Sorood Zahedi Abghari, Neda Gilani, Khashayar Yaghoubi

Page range: 1163-1178

Abstract

Naphtha catalytic reforming is a key process for oil refining in terms of production of gasoline with a high octane number. In the present research, the gradual and sudden effect of operating conditions changes on the products of the catalytic reforming unit and the octane number, as well as how to neutralize their negative effects were investigated. Also, kinetic parameter optimisation and unit operation optimisation, using the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm were performed. For these purposes, a suitable dynamic model was solved within a three-lump kinetic network that included a model of the reactors, furnaces, and catalyst deactivation functions. In addition, two cases were considered for operationalizing the optimization to maintain the octane number at its highest value during the catalyst lifetime. In the first case, the optimization parameters were the inlet temperature of the three reactors along with the recycle flow rate; in the second case, the optimised parameters were the inlet temperature of the three reactors, the recycle rate, and the feed flow rate.

April 1, 2022

3D virtual full-loop CFD simulation of industrial two-stage FCC reaction–regeneration system

Hanbin Zhong, Jing Chen, Fei Gao, Juntao Zhang, Yuqin Zhu, Ben Niu

Page range: 1179-1191

Abstract

The 3D virtual full-loop CFD simulation method with two-fluid model (TFM) was developed to model an industrial two-stage FCC reaction–regeneration system. The virtual connections (mass, species, and energy) between riser reactors, disengager, stripper, and regenerator were realized by defining user-defined functions (UDFs) for boundary conditions according to the reality. Five correction factors were used to correct the reaction rates in the 14-lump FCC reaction kinetics, and two correction factors were used to correct the FCC reaction heat in the first and second riser reactors. As a result, the whole FCC reaction–regeneration system was successfully modeled in one single CFD case. A thorough and comprehensive view of the performance of reaction–regeneration system was obtained by the 3D virtual full-loop CFD simulation, which is helpful for the operating and optimization of FCC unit. The major predicted results were in a good agreement with the industrial data. The effects of operating conditions were also investigated by changing regenerated temperature, catalyst to oil (CTO) ratio, and process capacity.

April 4, 2022

Experimental and simulation studies of a continuous reactive distillation for an esterification process

Mallaiah Mekala

Page range: 1193-1207

Abstract

Esterification of acetic acid and methanol to produce methyl acetate and water has been studied in a continuous packed bed catalytic reactive distillation column. Indion 180, an ion-exchange resin solid catalyst has loaded in an equivalent Katapak-S into the reactive section of the column. The experiments were conducted under different operating conditions of reboiler temperature, total feed flow rate of the reactants, methanol to acetic acid mole ratio, feed location of acetic acid and methanol with respect to reactive section, reflux ratio and catalyst amount to investigate the composition of distillate and reboiler respectively. The maximum methyl acetate composition and acetic acid conversion is obtained at reboiler temperature of 80 °C, reflux ratio of 2, total feed flow rate of 16.3 g/min, catalyst loading of 60 g and mole ratio of methanol to acetic acid is 1. From the experimental investigations, it is found that the composition of the methyl acetate in the distillate is 95% by mole at an optimized experimental condition. The experimental data has been compared with equilibrium and non-equilibrium model predictions and found that non-equilibrium model is able to predict the experimental data reasonably good. The calculated error from equilibrium model relative to experimental data is 4.71% and rate based model relative to experimental data is 0.61%. It is observed that the error is less in rate based model compared to equilibrium model.

April 15, 2022

A cross-mixing channel 3D-SAR micromixer with high mixing performance

Liqiang Zhang, Sicheng Yu, Zhou Hu, Chenxi Zhu, Jiakang Shi, Abubakar Ahmad Babangida, Daohan Ge

Page range: 1209-1227

Abstract

As an important part of laboratory-on-a-chip (LOC) and micro-total analysis system (μTAS), micromixers are widely used in the fields of biological analysis and chemical synthesis. Most of them are used for the pretreatment of the detection and analysis system to realize the full mixing between the sample and the target to improve the accuracy of the inspection system. A new type of 3D-SAR micromixer with cross-channel structures was put forward after the systemic simulation by using CFD software. The mixing performance and mechanism of 3D-SAR micromixer with/without cross-mixing channel has been investigated with different Reynolds numbers (Re). The results show that the 3D-SAR micromixer with or without cross-mixing channel structures are of excellent mixing performance when the Re was high (Re > 50), and the mixing index is close to 1. While the concentration stratification of the two fluids in the cross-mixing channel (CMC) 3D-SAR micromixer is obviously better than that of no-cross-mixing channel (NCMC) 3D-SAR micromixer when Re is low (Re < 10). It is because the two fluids in the cross-mixing channel rotate counterclockwise at the mixing unit, which induces a vortex and increases the contact area between the two fluids. The mixing performance is greatly improved, and the mixing index at the outlet is more than 0.9. Meanwhile, in order to optimize the higher pressure drop of the CMC micromixer, a new 3D-SAR micromixer with the unbalanced-cross-mixing channel (UCMC) is proposed based on the CMC structure. This channel structure can meet the requirements of high mixing index and low-pressure drop at the same time, which is helpful to design and manufacture of new type micromixer.

Short Communication

April 12, 2022

Effects of zinc chloride impregnation states on specific surface and dielectric properties of activated carbons

Shu Hui Tang, Lin Zhi Lee, Vanissa Sandra Andrew, Aiman Rashidi Mohd Akhmar, Muhammad Abbas Ahmad Zaini

Page range: 1229-1233

Abstract

The present work was aimed at evaluating the roles of zinc chloride impregnation states on specific surface and dielectric properties in microwave-assisted activated carbon preparation. Activated carbons were synthesized using castor shell at dry impregnation ratios of 1 and 2 (material-to-activator), and in suspensions of distilled water and zinc chloride, at power intensity of 800 W and irradiation time of 5 min. The activated carbons exhibit an improvement in dielectric properties and specific surface with increasing impregnation ratio. Palm kernel shell was employed for comparison to verify the effect of power intensity. At 800 W, the magnitudes of surface area are 1684 m 2 /g and 1150 m 2 /g for castor shell- and palm kernel shell-based activated carbons, respectively. A high specific surface brings about a greater methylene blue adsorption for possible applications in wastewater treatment.

5-year Impact Factor	1.579
Cite Score	2.4
Impact Factor	1.636
Journal Citation Indicator	0.22
SCImago Journal Rank	0.304
Source Normalized Impact per Paper	0.488

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Editorial

Editors
Hugo de Lasa; The University of Western Ontario; delasa.ijcre@eng.uwo.ca
Charles Xu; The University of Western Ontario; chunbaocharles.xu@gmail.com

Founding Editors
Franco Berruti; The University of Western Ontario; berruti.ijcre@eng.uwo.ca
Cedric Briens; The University of Western Ontario; briens.ijcre@eng.uwo.ca
Hugo de Lasa; The University of Western Ontario; delasa.ijcre@eng.uwo.ca

Editorial Board
Orlando Alfano; Universidad del Litoral, Argentina; alfano@intec.unl.edu.ar
Jose Arandes; Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain; iqparesj@lg.ehu.es
Xiaotao Bi; University of British Columbia, Canada; xbi@chbe.ubc.ca
Yi Cheng; Tsinghua University, China; yicheng@tsinghua.edu.cn
Jamal Chouki; Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal, Canada; jamal.chaouki@polymtl.ca
Valeria Di Sarli, National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Italy; valeria.disarli@stems.cnr.it
Anthony G. Dixon; Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA; agdixon@wpi.edu
Gulsen Dogu; Gazi University, Turkey; gdogu@gazi.edu.tr
Milorad P. Dudukovic; Washington University – St. Louis, USA; dudu@poly1.che.wustl.edu
Thierry Gauthier; Institut Français du Pétrole, France; thierry.gauthier@ifp.fr
John R. Grace; University of British Columbia, Canada; jgrace@chml.ubc.ca
Santosh Gupta; Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India; skgupta@iitk.ac.in
Mohammad M. Hossain; King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals; Saudi Arabia; mhossain@kfupm.edu.sa
Serge Kaliaguine; Université Laval, Canada; Serge.Kaliaguine@gch.ulaval.ca
Sibudjing Kawi; National University of Singapore; chekawis@nus.edu.sg
Samir Khanal; University of Hawaii, USA; khanal@hawaii.edu　
Paola Lettieri; University College London, United Kingdom; p.lettieri@ucl.ac.uk
Zheng-Hong Luo; Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China; luozh@sjtu.edu.cn　
Yasuo Ohtsuka; Akita University, Japan; ohtsukay@gipc.akita-u.ac.jp　　　
Ajay Kumar Ray; University of Western Ontario, Canada; aray@eng.uwo.ca
Wensheng Qin; Lakehead University, Canada; wqin@lakeheadu.ca　
Shan Ren, Chongqing University, China; shan.ren@cqu.edu.cn
Alirio Rodrigues; Universidade do Porto, Portugal; arodrig@fe.up.pt
Benito Serrano Rosales; Universidad de Zacatecas, Mexico; beniser@prodigy.net.mx
Hallvard F. Svendsen; Norwegian University of Science and Technology; svendsen@chemeng.ntnu.no
Zhongchao Tan; University of Waterloo, Canada; tanz@uwaterloo.ca　
Enrico Tronconi; Politecnico di Milano; enrico.tronconi@polimi.it
J. Ruud van Ommen; Delft University of Technology; j.r.vanommen@tudelft.nl
Guus van Rossum; University of Twente, The Netherlands; G.vanRossum@utwente.nl　
Fei Wei; Tsinghua University, China; weifei@flotu.org
Joachim Werther; Technical University Hamburg-Harburg, Germany; werther@tu-harburg.de
Gabriel Wild; Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Industries Chimiques, France; Gabriel.Wild@ensic.inpl-nancy.fr
Ying Zheng; University of New Brunswick, Canada; yzheng@unb.ca

(Deutsch)

Online ISSN: 1542-6580
Type: Journal
Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
First published: May 1, 2003
Publication Frequency: 12 Issues per Year
Audience: Researchers and practitioners interested in chemical reactor engineering What scholars are saying about the International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering I value very much the IJCRE for my research as it is one of the important, active and widespread technical journals to disseminate the knowledge and the information. I am always asking my students to continue submitting our new findings and achievements to IJCRE to outreach effectively to scientists and engineers from around the world. On behalf of my students and coworkers, I would like to thank you for considering our papers for publication in your journal. Dr. Muthanna Al-Dahhan , Professor and Chairman , Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering , Missouri University of Science and Technology

International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering

Frontmatter

Hydrodynamics and mixing performance in a continuous miniature conical counter-rotating twin-screw extruder

Abstract

High-efficiency, environment-friendly moss-enriched microbial fuel cell

Abstract

Applying metal coatings to dielectric materials by photochemical processes

Abstract

The photocatalytic degradation kinetics of the anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen in aqueous solution under UV/TiO2 system and neural networks modeling

Abstract

Pseudo-dynamic optimisation and study of the effect of gradual and sudden changes on the operating conditions of a naphtha catalytic reforming unit

Abstract

3D virtual full-loop CFD simulation of industrial two-stage FCC reaction–regeneration system

Abstract

Experimental and simulation studies of a continuous reactive distillation for an esterification process

Abstract

A cross-mixing channel 3D-SAR micromixer with high mixing performance

Abstract

Effects of zinc chloride impregnation states on specific surface and dielectric properties of activated carbons

Abstract

The photocatalytic degradation kinetics of the anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen in aqueous solution under UV/TiO₂ system and neural networks modeling