Exciting Distillations with Light

Reactive distillations have long been a promise to integrate chemical conversions with separations, especially to reduce overall equipment cost by limiting significantly the number of unit operations. Practically, for esterifications it has been shown that indeed, you can reduce tremendously the costs by applying reactive distillation. However, beyond esterifications not much has happened on the reactive distillation front. This is mainly because the temperature window of the reactions are mostly not overlapping the distillation temperature windows. In order to apply reactions at different temperatures than distillations, exciting hotspots with light might be an option, and exactly this is what we would like to investigate in this project. It is the goal that while reactions may proceed at such hotspots, the overall temperature profile of the distillation column may be maintained.

Assignment

This MSc-assignment is a cross-over project between the SPT-group and the PCS-group, and supervised jointly by Kasper Wenderich (PCS) and Boelo Schuur (SPT). You will study on the heating of silver nanoparticles using LED light, and make calculations, for example with simulations in COMSOL, on the heat dissipation and the possibility to maintain hotspots in a distillation column. The elements of the study include:

Literature overview on silver excitation with light, reactive distillation and simulation of heat transfer.
Synthesize silver nanoparticles and characterize them
Doing experimental studies on illumination of silver particles with LED sources, and study on the extent of heating up of liquids by the excited particles
Simulate heat transfer patterns
Consider geometries under which hot spots in distillation can be sustained for the reaction to take place

Contact info:

Supervision:
Prof. Dr. ir. Boelo Schuur

Daily supervisor:
Dr. Ir. Kasper Wenderich