Mass transfer through bio-catalytic membrane reactor Endre Nagya, Anita Lepossa, Zsolt Prettl
aUniversity of Pannonia, FIT, Research Institute of Chemical and Process Engineering, P.O.Box 158, 8201 Veszprem, Hungary, Tel.:00-36-624040, Fax: 00-36-624038, Email: nagye@mik.vein.hu;
nagy@mukki.richem.hu
2012 Summary
The mass transport through biocatalytic membrane reactor has been investigated. The enzyme or living cells were immobilized in the porous membrane matrix and the substrate(s) was fed by convective and diffusive flows through the membrane layer. The Michaelis- Menten kinetics, and its limiting cases, namely the first-order and zero-order reactions were investigated. The inlet and the outlet mass transfer rates were defined for all three cases in two operating modes, namely recirculation and ultrafiltration modes. The difference between these modes is in the boundary condition at the outlet side of membrane reactor. In ultrafiltration mode the concentration gradient is equal to zero, while that is larger than zero for recirculation mode. In this case, the outlet concentration is determined not only by the reaction conditions in the membrane but by the flow conditions in the sweep phase on the permeate side. Analytical approaches were developed to evaluate the Michaelis-Menten kinetics with a single and with two substrates. Concentration distributions and mass transfer rates are compared applying the different reaction order and operating modes.
