Rapid Screening of Kinetic Models for Methane Total Oxidation using an Automated Gas Phase Catalytic Microreactor Platform

An automated flow micropacked bed catalytic reactor platform was developed to conduct pre-planned experiments for rapid screening of kinetic models. The microreactor was fabricated using photolithography and deep reactive ion etching of a silicon wafer, with a reaction channel width and depth of 2 mm and 420 μm respectively. It was packed with ca. 10 mg of 5 wt. % Pd/Al₂O₃ catalyst to perform methane combustion, which was the selected reaction to test the developed platform. The experimental system was monitored and controlled by LabVIEW to which Python scripts for online design of experiments and data analysis were integrated. Within each experimental campaign, the platform automatically adjusted the experimental conditions, and the analysis of the product stream was conducted by online gas chromatography. The experimental platform demonstrated the capability of identifying the most probable kinetic models amidst potential models within two days.