Dissolved Gas reactor

More efficient utilisation of energy gases (hydrogen, oxygen, CO2) into chemical manufacturing will require development of catalytic processes beneficial to the planet. This PhD project objective is to use a high pressure dissolved gas reactor concept to facilitate the use of energy gasses by separation of the Gas-Liquid mass transfer and the reaction step into two separate unit operations: (i) dead end gas dissolution (no vent or recycle), generating a solution of gas at high pressure and (ii) a dissolved gas reactor in which the solution continuously flows over one or more catalyst pellets in a manner that affords precise control of the hydrodynamics. This gives greater ability to control and optimise gas transport to the surface of the catalyst.
The candidate will have access to existing processing equipment and will have the opportunity to invent, build and demonstrate the next generation of gas-liquid equipment that can be more easily implemented in gas and energy technology (e.g. pharmaceutical chemical reactions, CO2 Conversion to methane).
The project builds on recent work in the Muller group and is funded as an industrial Case award supported by catalyst manufacturer Johnson Matthey (JM).