(46g) Production of Hydrogen Peroxide Via the Direct Combination of H2 and O2 in a Pilot Microreactor

A multichannel, multilayer microreactor system comprising about 450 channels of dimension 800 microns by 800 microns was packed with a proprietary FMC catalyst and used to produce hydrogen peroxide by the direct combination of H ₂ and O₂. Using this propriety catalyst, we discovered operating conditions that enabled the production of over 2 wt% H₂O₂ in a single-channel reactor from a gas feed of 3% hydrogen in air and a solution feed of 1 wt % H₂SO₄ (with 10 ppm NaBr). Under the same operating conditions in the multi-channel pilot reactor, we achieved a concentration of 1 wt % H₂O₂ at a liquid (aqueous) flow rate of 1 kg/hr. Further optimization studies to improve gas-liquid feed distribution in the pilot reactor to achieve productivity equivalent to the single channel experiments are planned. Methods to uniformly pack catalyst into a multi-channel reactor and to remove the catalyst cleanly from every channel for replacement are discussed, as are the challenges associated with achieving uniform feed distribution to every channel in a gas-liquid system.