Paper ID: 2311.10456

Accurate and Fast Fischer-Tropsch Reaction Microkinetics using PINNs

Harshil Patel, Aniruddha Panda, Tymofii Nikolaienko, Stanislav Jaso, Alejandro Lopez, Kaushic Kalyanaraman

Microkinetics allows detailed modelling of chemical transformations occurring in many industrially relevant reactions. Traditional way of solving the microkinetics model for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) becomes inefficient when it comes to more advanced real-time applications. In this work, we address these challenges by using physics-informed neural networks(PINNs) for modelling FTS microkinetics. We propose a computationally efficient and accurate method, enabling the ultra-fast solution of the existing microkinetics models in realistic process conditions. The proposed PINN model computes the fraction of vacant catalytic sites, a key quantity in FTS microkinetics, with median relative error (MRE) of 0.03%, and the FTS product formation rates with MRE of 0.1%. Compared to conventional equation solvers, the model achieves up to 1E+06 times speed-up when running on GPUs, thus being fast enough for multi-scale and multi-physics reactor modelling and enabling its applications in real-time process control and optimization.

Submitted: Nov 17, 2023