Alavi Amleshi, Seyed Mehdi; (1991) Selective oxidation of C4 hydrocarbons in fluidized-bed reactor. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D.), University College London.

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Abstract

Catalytic reactions between gases and solids are of the utmost industrial importance. Gas-solid catalytic reactors can be divided into two main classes, those in which solids remain stationary such as fixed-bed reactors, and those in which the solids are in motion, such as fluidized-bed reactors. Fluidized-bed reactors have been used on an industrial scale for over 60 years and during that time a large number of mathematical models have been devised to predict reactor performance. Many of these models apply to gas-solid catalytic processes in which the fluidized-bed operates in the bubbling mode and there have been many reports of laboratory scale tests of the models, in most cases simple first-order kinetic schemes being applied. The object of the work described here was to apply the models to a more complex form of kinetics in which both consecutive and parallel processes were occurring. The reactions chosen were the catalytic oxidation of C4 hydrocarbons, butane and butenes, in which maleic anhydride was an important product. Two series of experiments were performed: (i) the determination of the chemical kinetics of the reactions using a small fixed-bed micro reactor, (ii) measurements of conversion and selectivity using a fluidized-bed reactor. A laboratory pilot-scale fluidized-bed reactor was built to obtain experimental data for comparison with the prediction of the models. The main variables studied were temperature, fluidizing gas flowrate and quantity of catalyst in the reactor, each being varied over as wide a range as possible. An industrial catalyst was used for the investigation. A number of previously published fluid-bed reactor models were programmed in Fortran and their predictions of conversion and selectivity were compared with the experimental results. In some cases good agreement was found but in others the predictions differed considerably from the measurements. The reasons for this are discussed and suggestions made of ways in which model applications can be improved.

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