BioCon – Design of a swirling flow loop reactor for catalytic biorefining

The Reductive Catalytic Fractionation (RCF) biorefinery, pioneered at KU Leuven, creates high-value chemicals with improved functionality, starting from non-edible lignocellulosic feedstock. Therefore, it can play a key role in the transition towards a sustainable bio-economy, provided that its scalability is assured. Going beyond the state of the art, this innovative project aims to develop a novel reactor concept that is scalable towards continuous processing on an industrial level, creating opportunities to strengthen the IP portfolio of the BioCon upscaling platform. It will take the opportunity to tailor and advance the reactor concept by advanced numerical modeling, paying attention to high product yield, process economics and safety.

Keywords:Bio-economy, Catalytic biorefining, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Reactor design, Pilot blueprint

Disciplines:Heterogeneous catalysis, Wood and forest biomass processing, Catalysis, Fluid mechanics and fluid dynamics