Chaotic flow inside porous media accelerates the transport, mixing, and reaction of molecules and particles in widespread natural and factitious processes. Current macroscopic models based on the average pore-scale variations show obvious limitations in the prediction of many chemical processes. In this paper, we reconstruct microscopic foam structures using Micro Computed Tomography to simulate fluid flow in structured ZSM-5@SiC foam catalyst. Moreover, we propose a conceptual model based on the microscopic mean square displacement theory to characterize the effective dispersion inside an open-cell foam. This model will explain the flow characteristics of confined fluid inside the porous media from fluid elements perspective. Particularly, dispersion factor and structure factor, as key parts of this model, perfectly interpret the driving characteristics of pressure drop, velocity different, and reaction in continuous foam media flow. This work also provides a unique means of predicting reaction kinetics of confined fluid in structured foam catalyst.

Distillation reactor is one of the important equipment to improve the reaction conversion limited by the chemical equilibrium, however, the design of distillation reactor in industrial scale is still challenging due to the lack of efficient catalytic packing with corresponding kinetics. This work developed the novel catalytic packing consists of the structured ZSM-5@SiC foam catalyst and corrugated sheet, which used in distillation reactor for synthesis of ethyl levulinate (EL). The kinetic of structured ZSM-5@SiC foam catalyst was measured and model regarding the “structure factor” of ZSM-5@SiC catalyst and fluid flow conditions. Furthermore, the design of distillation reactor in industrial scale has been performed based on the developed kinetics, which demonstrated an excellent performance in the designed distillation reactor (EL yield 37.65% with energy consumption 3695 kJ/kg) are achieved. X-ray CT characterization revealed that the ZSM-5 coating thickness has the significantly effects on the kinetics and performances of distillation reactor.