Using dark fermentation, hydrogen can be generated from renewable organics including waste materials. Key to successful application of anaerobic fermentation is to uncouple liquid and biomass retention times in reactor system. This paper reviews reactor configurations (fixed-bed, fluidized-bed, upflow anaerobic sludge blanket and continuous stirred tank reactors) and operating processes (batch,...

A large number of chemical, bio-chemical and pollution-control processes use heterogeneous fixed-bed reactors. The use of finite hollow cylindrical catalyst pellets can enhance conversion levels in such reactors. The absence of the pellet core can significantly lower the diffusional resistance associated with the solid phase. This leads to a better utilization of the catalytic material, which i...

A fixed bed reactor design program is developed by the use of Java JDK1.7 algorithm language with Eclipse program as the platform. The program selects five common fix bed reactor process flows to calculate the main structure parameters of the reactor. With the good interface, the program can output the corresponding results after inputting the kinetics and thermodynamics parameters of the react...

The extent of biological CO2 fixation was evaluated for outdoor cultures of the cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. ATCC 33047. Culture conditions were optimized indoors in bubble-column photochemostats operating in continuous mode, subjected to irradiance cycles mimicking the light regime outdoors. Highest values achieved for CO2 fixation rate and biomass productivity were 1 and 0.6 g L(-1) day(-1), r...

A steady-state cross-flow reactor for ethylene epoxidation was simulated using industrial data (low oxygen/ethylene feed ratio) and pilot plant data (high oxygen/ethylene feed ratio). A comparison between the conventional fixed-bed reactor and the cross-flow reactor with two types of feeding modes was performed. The present study showed the possibility of enhancing the reactor yield by distribu...