Scaling Up

‌‌A vital component of taking new concepts from the laboratory to practical application is scale up. Many experiments in the laboratory take place in small reactors which have volumes of tens of millilitres. The small reactors are practical for a number of reasons, not least the laboratory space and the volumes of wastewater that are needed to be processed. However, increasing the size of the reactors is not as straightforward as simply making the small reactors bigger. As the volume is increased, the systems tend to be much less efficient.

We have therefore incorporated scale up as a central component of our proposed research. Our scaling up research uses tubular reactors which are linked together, giving a volume of tens of litres.