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Concept
Laminar flow reactor
Summary
A laminar flow reactor (LFR) is a type of chemical reactor that uses laminar flow to control reaction rate, and/or reaction distribution. LFR is generally a long tube with constant diameter that is kept at constant temperature. Reactants are injected at one end and products are collected and monitored at the other. Laminar flow reactors are often used to study an isolated elementary reaction or multi-step reaction mechanism.
Laminar flow reactors employ the characteristics of laminar flow to achieve various research purposes. For instance, LFRs can be used to study fluid dynamics in chemical reactions, or they can be utilized to generate special chemical structures such as carbon nanotubes. One feature of the LFR is that the residence time (The time interval during which the chemicals stay in the reactor) of the chemicals in the reactor can be varied by either changing the distance between the reactant input point and the point at which the product/sample is taken, or by adjusting the velocity of the gas/fluid. Therefore the benefit of a laminar flow reactor is that the different factors that may affect a reaction can be easily controlled and adjusted throughout an experiment.
Means of analyzing the reaction include using a probe that enters into the reactor; or more accurately, sometimes one can utilize non-intrusive optical methods (e.g. use spectrometer to identify and analyze contents) to study reactions in the reactor. Moreover, taking the entire sample of the gas/fluid at the end of the reactor and collecting data may be useful as well. Using methods mentioned above, various data such as concentration, flow velocity etc. can be monitored and analyzed.
Fluids or gases with controlled velocity pass through a laminar flow reactor in a fashion of laminar flow. That is, streams of fluids or gases slide over each other like cards. When analyzing fluids with the same viscosity ("thickness" or "stickiness") but different velocity, fluids are typically characterized into two types of flows: laminar flow and turbulent flow.
Official source
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