Development of packed bed membrane reactor for the oxidative dehydrogenation of propane

Abstract

In this research, a reactor concept for the oxidative dehydrogenation of propane was studied. First a literature survey was performed, to investigate which are the best catalyst systems and best operating conditions that result in the largest propylene yield. In the kinetic study of ODHP over a Ga2O3/MoO3 catalyst which followed, the reaction rates were experimentally determined in a catalytic reactor under differential reaction conditions for the catalyzed and non-catalyzed system. The results obtained showed that the reaction orders in oxygen are higher for the side reactions, than for the main reaction, indicating that the distributive oxygen feed via a packed bed membrane reactor can be used to maximize the propylene yield. For quantifying the benefit of employing a packed bed membrane reactor with distributive oxygen feed, instead of packed bed reactor with premixed reactants feed, a detailed numerical model was developed. Using this model, the performance of a reactor for the catalyzed ODHP was simulated for the cases of premixed and distributed oxygen feeding, where the reactants composition, flow rates and extent and manner of dilution were varied. The simulation results demonstrated that large improvements in propylene yield can be achieved via distributive feeding of oxygen. Finally, a series of experiments were performed in a lab-scale packed bed membrane reactor in order to validate the numerical simulation results. A good match between experimental results and results from numerical simulations showed that a significantly higher propylene yield can be achieved at higher propane conversions in a packed bed membrane, outperforming conventional reactor concepts for the ODHP.