Stochastic modeling of catalytic processes in nanoporous materials: Beyond mean-field approach

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2017-01-01
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Garcia, Andres
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James W. Evans
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Physics and Astronomy
Physics and astronomy are basic natural sciences which attempt to describe and provide an understanding of both our world and our universe. Physics serves as the underpinning of many different disciplines including the other natural sciences and technological areas.
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Transport and reaction in zeolites and other porous materials, such as mesoporous silica particles, has been a focus of interest in recent years. This is in part due to the possibility of anomalous transport effect (e.g. single-file diffusion) and its impact in the reaction yield in catalytic processes. Computational simulations are often used to study these complex non-equilibrium systems. Computer simulations using Molecular Dynamics (MD) techniques are prohibitive, so instead coarse grained one-dimensional models with the aid of Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations are used. Both techniques can be computationally expensive, both time and resource wise. These coarse-grained systems can be exactly described by a set of coupled stochastic master equations, that describe the reaction-diffusion kinetics of the system. The equations can be written exactly, however, coupling between the equations and terms within the equations make it impossible to solve them exactly; approximations must be made. One of the most common methods to obtain approximate solutions is to use Mean Field (MF) theory. MF treatments yield reasonable results at high ratios of reaction rate k to hop rate h of the particles; but fail completely at low k/h due to the over-estimation of fluxes of particles within the pore. We develop a method to estimate fluxes and intrapore diffusivity in simple one-dimensional reaction-diffusion models at high and low k/h, where the pores are coupled to an equilibrated three-dimensional fluid. We thus successfully describe analytically these simple reaction-diffusion one-dimensional systems. Extensions to models considering behavior with long range steric interactions and wider pores require determination of multiple boundary conditions. We give a prescription to estimate the required parameters for these simulations. For one dimensional systems, if the single-file diffusion condition is relaxed, additional parameters to describe particle exchange have to be introduced. We use Langevin Dynamics (LD) simulations to asses these parameters.

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Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2017