2024 AIChE Annual Meeting
(247g) Forced Dynamic Operation within the Tradition of Chemical Engineering at UH
Author
Bollini, P. - Presenter, University of Houston
Catalytic partial oxidation reactions constitute the basis for a significant fraction of global organic chemical production, and are emerging as low-temperature alternatives to existing energy-intensive endothermic processes. Strategies for the forced dynamic operation of these oxidation reactions have been evaluated in the open literature, but relied for the most part on exploiting kinetic factors determining product selectivity, not transport factors that are presumed (a priori) to diminish reactor performance.
This talk will discuss collaborative work with Michael Harold in which forced dynamic operation of the oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane is used to selectively deplete chemisorbed oxygen species responsible for COx formation. It will emphasize how seemingly deleterious transport limitations in catalyst particle sizes of relevance to industrial practice are in fact critical to achieving preferential oxygen depletion in systems characterized by a lack of kinetic anomalies such as fractional order oxygen dependencies. This concept of mass transfer-assisted dynamic operation is placed within the historical context of prior work conducted at the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at UH.