read all at
http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i9/Peering-Inside-Reactors.html
It’s tough to get a detailed account of what’s going on inside catalytic chemical reactors while those workhorse pieces of equipment are running. If researchers could peer inside and monitor—at a microscopic level and in real time—the chemical reactions under way, they would gather a treasure trove of useful information. Engineers could then customize reactor geometry and dimensions and tailor the catalyst distribution to maximize energy efficiency, product output, and chemical selectivity.
That type of custom reactor engineering may be close at hand, thanks to a study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The team designed a miniature reactor whose interior can be probed microscopically with infrared and X-ray beams. They used it to interrogate a multistep chemical reaction with extreme spatial resolution. The group pinpointed to within 15 μm the regions inside the reactor in which a flowing starting material was transformed to an initial product and then a final product. They correlated that information with the microscopic location, concentration, and chemical state of catalytic nanoparticles (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014, DOI: 10.1021/ja412740p).
