Ammonia oxidation in a microreactor

What is a microreactor?

First, though, what is a reactor? The reactor that's usually used for making nitric oxide in those fertilizer plants we discussed earlier is BIG! SO BIG!! So big and so heavy that you would probably need a special tractor trailer to haul it around. It is heavy because it's made of thick metal. The reactor is packed with special stuff called catalyst, too.

A microreactor is a miniaturized version of the reactor we described above. Most microreactors can fit easily in your pocket. A good comparison to think about is the size of computers. Mainframe computers and supercomputers can be pretty big - some can occupy whole floors of buildings - while handheld palm computers are pretty tiny. But they both can do the same types of things, can't they?

The microreactor we used to model the ammonia oxidation reaction in this project is about the size of a postage stamp. Want to see some actual microreactors?

BUT ...

If you're really interested, check out the junior chemical engineer's version of this page.

If you're sort of lost, here's how to get all the way back to the beginning of the high school version