Siew Hui (Faye) Chong (PhD Student)
Curtin University of Technology

Project Title
Modeling and Control of Heterogeneous Catalytic Reactors for VOCs Elimination

Biography 
Faye Chong graduated in Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from Curtin University of Technology (Miri Campus), Malaysia in year 2005. She is now pursuing her PhD by research in Curtin University of Technology, Perth since July 2006. Her particular research interests are modeling, simulation and control, as well as Computational Fluid Dynamics. Her current research is model development and control of a novel photocatalytic reactor for indoor air purification. Beside study, she is active in volleyball and tango dancing.

Start Date
July 2006

Project Details
With the purpose of eliminating a variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in indoor air, this research aims at developing effective and economic air-cleaning technologies using heterogeneous catalysis, based on nanomaterials. Two innovative technologies will be developed—photocatalytic oxidation (PCO) and combined adsorption and catalytic destruction of VOCs.

A major unresolved issue in the commercialization of photocatalytic oxidation (PCO) technology is the optimum photoreactor configuration design. For that reason, in this work, a full modeling and simulation of the radiation, hydrodynamics and photocatalytic oxidation reaction of a proposed photoreactor, which is a combination of a TiO2-coated optical fiber photoreactor and a honeycomb monolith reactor, will be carried out using Computational Fluid Dynamics code—Gambit® and Fluent®. The simulation results will be tested and validated with experimental results. A control strategy for the photoreactor will also be designed and tested, to achieve desired VOCs concentration while considering the safety and economic issues.

Besides, the combined adsorption and catalytic destruction technology appears as promising as the photocatalytic oxidation technology. This research will also involve the modeling and control of a proposed reactor with selected nano-sized catalyst in a sorbent/catalyst medium for ambient adsorption and subsequent oxidative destruction of the volatile organic compounds in indoor air.