Modeling photocatalytic conversion of carbon dioxide in bubbling twin reactor

Highlights: • Photocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide in the bubbling twin reactor is proposed. • The gas-liquid interface is traced and the methanol concentration is obtained. • The bubbling twin reactor is superior to traditional twin reactor in mass transfer. • The methanol yield can be improved by increasing the inlet gas velocity. - Abstract: The production of valued added fuels and chemicals via photocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction has attracted increasing attentions in recent years. Based on the traditional twin reactor configuration, a novel bubbling twin reactor is proposed to improve the conversion of carbon dioxide to methanol in this work. The multiphysical model for the bubbling twin reactor is developed and numerically simulated. The variations of the methanol production with the gas inlet flow velocity and gas inlet number are obtained. The results show that the bubbling twin reactor has a higher carbon dioxide conversion efficiency than the traditional one. Moreover, the methanol production subsequently increases as the gas inlet velocity increases. With the constant inlet gas volumetric flow rate, the production of methanol can be improved by increasing the gas inlet number.