Comsol Releases Chemical Reaction Engineering Module

Comsol’s new module is built on the Comsol platform to create a single environment where engineers and scientists obtain accurate studies of material transport and chemical reactions of a wide variety of chemistries under different operating conditions.

Comsol said that users of this new module can simulate reaction systems ranging from micro-reactors in biotechnology to unit operations in chemical processes and gain the necessary knowledge early in the development phase.

The Chemical Reaction Engineering Module combines functionality of two earlier modules, the Chemical Engineering Module and the Reaction Engineering Module.

The new module leverages the newly re-engineered Comsol version 4 architecture to deliver major new functionality and superior usability.

Comsol claimed that with the new module, engineers and scientists can investigate chemical reactions under the controlled conditions of perfectly mixed systems in laboratory studies. Since reactions are directly accessible in a single easy-to-use interface, users can study the influence of multiple concentration and temperature variations in real operating conditions.

The Chemical Reaction Engineering Module provides interfaces for mass transport that describe species transport by diffusion, convection, and migration in dilute and concentrated solutions.

The Chemical Reaction Engineering Module is built-in Cape-Open standards and can read Chemkin files, which includes physical and thermodynamic properties, for combustion, atmospheric chemistry, and other gas-phase reacting systems.

Henrik von Schenk, chemical engineering product manager of Comsol, said: “The Chemical Reaction Engineering Module is suitable for a wide range of product and process development applications. It’s particularly useful in the design of sensors for analytical instruments as well as for designing catalysts and filters in automotive exhaust systems.

“The Chemical Reaction Engineering Module is expected to be valuable when developing products and processes in industries like consumer products, fine and specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and bulk chemicals.

The fusion of our chemical engineering capabilities into a single solution offering an all-inclusive, easy-to-use environment is a great convenience for our customers. The Chemical Reaction Engineering Module helps you make design decisions quickly using comparisons between ideal reactor models and detailed time and space simulations.

“It lets you handle simulations beginning at a simple level, which makes it easy to evaluate the chemistry of a system and find reaction time scales, temperatures, and ideal operating conditions. Then, you can use the identical model to run full 3D simulations for investigating and designing processes and reactors in real-world operating conditions.”