To explore options for simple, safe, and compact chemical reactors that preserve wanted metastable initial products from sequential unwanted reactions, academic and industrial researchers have tried to repurpose reciprocating piston equipment or an “engine-like” design to be used as a chemical reactor. Piston reactors offer the benefit of achieving very high temperature and pressure conditions at very short and defined residence times. Such conditions offer promise for enhanced performance for several chemical conversions. This paper provides a review of the published literature and patents in the field of piston reactors to provide an overview of the current state-of-the-art. The review covers multiple aspects of piston reactors and their applications, reactor design options and their operation, catalyst and ignition placement, tested reactions, experimental setups as well as modeling and simulation. Several research gaps are highlighted as a motivation for future research in the field. To help interested readers into the topic, basic concepts and fundamentals of piston reactors are provided.

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用于生产化学品的活塞式反应器的审查

为了探索简单、安全和紧凑的化学反应器的选择，以保护所需的亚稳态初始产物免受后续有害反应的影响，学术和工业研究人员试图将往复式活塞设备或“类似发动机”的设计重新用作化学反应器。活塞式反应器的好处是可以在非常短的限定停留时间内实现非常高的温度和压力条件。这样的条件为提高几种化学转化的性能提供了希望。本文回顾了活塞反应器领域已发表的文献和专利，以概述当前的最新技术。审查涵盖活塞式反应器及其应用、反应器设计选项及其操作、催化剂和点火放置、测试反应的多个方面，实验装置以及建模和仿真。几个研究空白被强调为该领域未来研究的动力。为了帮助感兴趣的读者了解该主题，提供了活塞反应器的基本概念和基本原理。