A versatile Carberry-type microcatalytic reactor for transient and/or continuous flow operation at atmospheric or medium pressure

Abstract

A novel catalytic reaction device featuring a Carberry-type well-mixed microreactor built inside a medium pressure leak valve is presented. The complete reaction system allows a broad range of kinetic reaction engineering and heterogeneous catalysis studies for both batch (transient) and continuous operation. Carefully controlled temperature (± 0.2 K) and pressure (up to 3 MPa) conditions can be achieved. The continuous sampling of the reacting mixture permits instantaneous evaluation of the gas phase composition. The device performance was validated by comparing methanol synthesis reaction rates for H2/CO2 mixtures obtained under transient conditions using this catalytic microreactor with steady-state kinetic rate expressions obtained using a conventional plug-flow microreactor employing the same Pd-GaOx/SiO2 catalyst. Excellent agreement was found. The reaction was also studied using a more active commercial methanol synthesis catalyst to assess the impact of heat and mass transfer resistances. For the full range of process conditions that was tested, the microreactor operated well under the kinetic regime.