COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab™

Learn how to use the COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab, which creates kinetic models of reacting systems from chemical-reaction formulas that you enter into the user interface. The Reaction Engineering Lab also offers a direct coupling to the Chemical Engineering Module—in this way you can create models involving material, energy, and momentum balances in COMSOL Multiphysics directly from a set of reaction formulas. In this course you try it on bioengineering problems and mixed reactors.

The exercises include:

• A kinetic analysis of in vivo pDNA degradation in gene therapy. Here, you compare a simulation to experimental results. This type of study is illustrated here for the field of biotechnology but the principle is relevant for any field involving reacting systems.
• A model that highlights the use of the predefined CSTR reactor type (Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor). This model also shows you how to enter the thermodynamic data to needed for energy balances. We build a model reactor for hydrolysis of propylene oxide into propylene glycol. Propylene glycol finds wide application as a moisturizer in foods, parmaceuticals and cosmetics.
• A generic model of including space dependency. We define a model of a tubular reactor at steady state (in the Reaction Engineering Lab) and then proceed to space dependent modeling by exporting this model to the Chemical Engineering Module. You then introduce radial effects in the tubular reactor by modeling the system in two dimensions.
• Selective reduction of NOx by ammonia as flue gas passes through a honeycomb reactor. The chemical reactions take place on the surface of a V2O5/TiO2 catalyst that is supported on a ceramic structure. This example shows how to use the COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab in concert with the Chemical Engineering Module to readily solve advanced engineering problems.