Retrofitting of Fixed-Bed Heterogeneous Reactors for Glucose Isomerization

A retrofitting strategy is proposed here that can enhance the conversion level while significantly reducing the pressure drop in fixed-bed glucose isomerization reactors. The proposed strategy utilizes hollow support matrix for enzyme immobilization instead of commonly used solid spherical support. The absence of core in hollow catalytic support helps to lower diffusional resistances, thus ensuring a better utilization of the catalytic material. This leads to higher conversion in the reactor. Moreover, the use of hollow packing yields high bed void fraction, which helps to substantially lower the pressure drop. Specifying the proposed hollow support matrix as being either cylindrical or ring shaped, a rigorous heterogeneous model for the glucose isomerization reactor is developed here. The model validity is first tested by using reported experimental data for spherical support. Using the present model, the reactor performance can be optimized in terms of shape parameters of the proposed hollow support for enzyme immobilization.