(743g) Oxidative Coupling of Methane over Mixed Metal Oxides

Oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) is one of the promising routes to convert natural gas to useful chemical building blocks like ethylene. The reactions between methane and oxygen leading to C₂+ products are known to be highly exothermic and some researchers have pointed out that the hot spot temperatures within the catalyst bed in lab scale reactors could exceed the feed temperature by as much as 300°C.

We present experimental and modeling studies on the bifurcation behavior of OCM in fixed bed reactors. Feed temperature and space time are studied as bifurcation variables at various feed CH₄/O₂ ratios. Further, the bifurcation behavior (or lack of) is explained with various reactor configurations, showing the impact of heat transfer characteristics. For systems exhibiting multiple steady-states and bifurcation behavior, this work demonstrates the path dependency of the observed states and provides new insight for systems exhibiting such behavior.