Today, the increasingly serious lack of resources and the obsolescence of the plants present on the whole planet led to develop new ways that go beyond "traditional" chemical engineering. The research is now focusing on novel equipment and techniques that potentially could change the concept of chemical plants and lead to compact, safe, energy-efficient, and environment-friendly sustainable processes. These developments share a common focus on "process intensification" — an approach that has

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... ly emerged in the past few years as a special and interesting discipline of chemical engineering, because of the reasons enounced above. Process intensification tends its aim to the reduction of the total costs (fixed and operating) in an industrial plant. This "saving" in economic terms is possible not only by making a minimization of the equipment's volume, but it's also related to both chemical and physical aspects of one industrial process. The principle targets of a process intensification are: 1. Improved control of reactor kinetics giving higher selectivity/reduced waste products. 2. Higher energy efficiency. 3. Reduced capital costs. 4. Reduced inventory/improved intrinsic safety/fast response times. In order to reach all of these targets, it must be considered that transport phenomena play a very important role for the process intensification of an industrial reactor. Also improvements in environmental impact is another aspect that is constantly faced today, regarding all the processes in which there is the need of eliminating one dangerous chemical species. Taking into accounts all these reasons, one possible candidate for process intensification is represented by the Water Gas Shift process (WGS). It is the first purification stage of a hydrogen production plant, and involves the conversion of CO in CO2, while at the same time there is an increase in H2 yield in syngas. It also provides a H2/N2 mixtures with the appropriate ratio for the production of an important chemical product, such as ammonia. The WGS is an [...]