Showing papers in "Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering in 2020"

Process intensification connects scales and disciplines towards sustainability

Abstract: Process intensification (PI) has been established as a cluster of technologies able to produce more with less. While scientists around the globe advocate for new semantics that are increasingly tied to the notion of sustainability, what does the literature data say about PI? A Vosviewer bibliometric map of PI displays it as closely linked to the subjects of design, optimization, gas‐to‐liquid technologies, mass transfer, catalysis, and kinetics. We analyze the relationship between PI and these subjects while identifying misconceptions about the intensifying potential of some of them, as is the case for optimization. We provide examples and summarize the recent technological trends for all these cases. Finally, we provide an outlook on the future of PI in which we identify elements that will be key to accelerate the adoption of PI at the commercial scale.

A theoretical study of the reverse water-gas shift reaction on Ni(111) and Ni(311) surfaces

Abstract: This paper presents a systematic comparison study of the surface redox reaction mechanism for reverse water-gas shift (RWGS) over Ni(111) and Ni(311) surfaces. Specifically, the most stable surface intermediates and the reaction kinetics involved in the direct CO 2 activation and water formation steps are computed with density functional theory calculations and compared for the two different Ni surfaces. The results show that CO 2, CO, O, H, OH, and H 2O species adsorb stronger on Ni(311) than on Ni(111). Compared to Ni(111), the overall barriers for direct CO 2 activation and water formation on Ni(311) are lower by 23 and 17 kJ/mol, respectively. These observations indicate that the RWGS reaction through the surface redox mechanism should be preferred on Ni(311).