(228d) Efficient Catalyst-to-Reactor Methodologies for Novel Chemical Reactor Design and Scale-up

Advances in material engineering open new possibilities in heterogeneous catalysis. Various forms of catalyst supports (such as long ceramic membranes, mechanically durable tubes that can withstand temperatures up to 2000 C, multilayer pellets of complex geometry etc.) now open new possibilities for deploying the catalytically active ingredients within reactors, potentially leading to substantial improvements in selectivity, safety, and catalyst usability and lifetime for reaction processes such as Fischer-Tropsch gas-to-liquid (GTL) conversion.

On the other hand, the very existence of these new options often significantly enlarges the reactor design space, the effective and efficient exploration of which now presents new challenges. In particular, traditional approaches for reactor design and scale-up are often limited by the cost and time of pilot plant experimentation that is required to explore all these possibilities.

This paper describes a method whereby kinetic data measured for one form of catalyst support can be used to quantify the performance of that catalyst in any other geometry. The approach is illustrated with data gathered for cylindrical pellets catalyst being used for catalyst engineering of (i) hollow pellets (ii) eggshell (iii) membrane reactors in various arrangements of gas flow.