CFD simulation of homogeneous reaction characteristics of dehydration of fructose to HMF in micro-channel reactors

In this work the applicability of the micro-channel reactor technique to the production of promising platform chemical 5-hydroxymethyl furan (HMF) from fructose in aqueous solution is systemically investigated by performing CFD simulations. Influential factors including solvents, residence time distribution of reaction mixtures, heat transfer conditions and micro-channel configurations are evaluated in terms of the reaction performance indices, i.e., conversion of fructose, HMF selectivity and yield. A scale-up method from a single channel to a multiple channel reactor is also proposed. It is demonstrated that: 1) at the single channel scale, controlling residence times and temperature distribution of the reaction mixture within the channel is crucial for enhancing the reaction performance, while different channel configurations lead to marginal improvements; 2) for the scaling-up of the reaction process, a reactor module containing 15 circular parallel channels could be used as module blocks, which can be stacked one by one to meet the required reactor performance and production capacity. The present results show that micro-reactors are quite suitable for HMF production.