Microscale reactors operate in sub millimeter space dimensions. Their small length scale enables process intensification of mass, heat and momentum transport that influence reaction rates. Hence it's possible to observe the true intrinsic reaction kinetics occurring for a set of reactions. In this work a novel microscale reactor for producing...
Nonthermal plasmas generate high concentrations of excited species that can simultaneously exist at high energy and far from thermodynamic equilibrium, making them useful tools in chemistry and engineering. Microplasmas, roughly defined as plasmas that are generated within sub-millimeter dimensions, provide enhanced stability, improved excited species density, increased nonequilibrium properties, higher...
High temperature microchannel heat recuperators (HTμRs) offer an efficient means of improving reactor process thermal efficiency by offering smaller form factors due to increased heat transfer surface area density and volumetric heat transfer rate over traditional heat exchanger designs. To date, HTμRs face cost and reliability challenges. In this work,...
Global warming is becoming an increasingly important environmental concern and CO₂ is considered as the major cause of global warming. Creating useful applications for CO₂ would generate alternatives to merely venting CO₂ to the atmosphere, and decreasing the carbon intensity of human activities. Among various methods of CO₂ utilization, conversion...
Atmospheric pressure plasma is non-thermal at millimeter to micrometer separations. It represents an alternative low exergy initiator of many chemical reactions. In many instances heat, light or sound are not efficient providers of the necessary energy to overcome chemical activation barriers. The focus of this research is applying dc nonthermal...
The ever increasing requirements for heat dissipation in various thermal management applications such as computer chip cooling and high power electronics have necessitated the need for novel thermal management techniques. Thermal management using heat sinks with microscale features is amongst the prominent techniques developed over the past two decades. In...
There are approximately 2.2 million cases of End-stage Renal Disease (ESRD) worldwide and current hemodialysis treatment is costly and ultimately insufficient compared to kidney transplantation. There is a strong need to arrive at a better solution for treating ESRD. Microchannel-based hemodialysis is one proposed option, already shown to have improved...
Advances of colloidal nanomaterials for societal benefit have been hampered by the high cost and low quality of nanoparticles (NPs). The production of high quality nanoparticles within colloidal suspension has two related concerns; (1) current high production rates methods of synthesizing nanoparticles result in a larger range of particle size,...
A novel microscale combustor-heat exchanger (μCHX) for hydrogen storage applications is presented in this dissertation. The design of the μCHX is motivated by its application to two particular systems for automotive use- those that utilize metal hydrides (MH) and cryo-adsorbents (CA) to store hydrogen. Thermal energy needs to be supplied...
In this work, continuous synthesis routes for binary nanoparticles using advantages of microchannel mixing (low diffusion distances and higher mass transfer) and fast heating rates provided by ultrasound induced heating are investigated. In addition, the application of silica nanoparticles in anti-reflective coatings on glass and understanding the structure property-performance correlation...