ELECTROCHEMICAL ENGINEERING ANALYSIS OF MULTISECTIONED POROUS-ELECTRODES

A theoretical analysis of the performance of multisectioned flow-through porous electrodes consisting of alternating microstructures of conducting and insulating sections is presented. The potential benefits of the multisectioned technologies are;examined in terms of selectivity for the production of an intermediate species in a typical charge-transfer reaction sequence. The analysis demonstrates the feasibility of using multisectioned electrodes to provide adequately uniform current distributions without the use of the membrane separators required in traditional configurations. Nevertheless, use of the multisectioned design solely to render the current distribution in the porous electrode more uniform may not be economically competitive when compared to standard electrode arrangements due to the significant ohmic penalty involved in the operation of the multisectioned reactors. More promising benefits of multisectioned constructions lie in the additional flexibility involved in operation with controllable spatial and time-varying current distributions. Raster pulse electrolysis is one technology of this type, and its potential interest for electrosynthesis is briefly discussed.