Abstract
Three-step Hock process is widely used in phenol industry, which suffers slow reaction speed, low efficiency, and generation of many by-products. As a key step, cumene oxidation has a significant influence on the quality of produced phenol and the process is controlled by mass transfer. Herein, aimed at enhancing cumene oxidation, microfluidics was used to strengthen the non-catalytic process. Experimental investigation with different microfluidic strategies confirmed that continuous mass transfer enhancement was of great importance for this system. When oxygen was used as the oxidant and operation at 130 °C and 0.8 MPa for 2 h, 66.2% conversion, 92.0% selectivity, and 60.9% yield were obtained, which were better than those in traditional batch reactors. The conversion was doubled while still maintaining a high selectivity of over 90%, and the reaction time was shortened to 1/4 of the original time. On the basis of the enhanced mass transfer, the kinetics of cumene oxidation was also investigated. The obtained reaction order of cumene was approximately 1.5.
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More From: Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification
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