External diffusion control in the gas-phase dehydrogenation of hydrocarbons on a catalyst pellet

Abstract

External-diffusion gas-phase mass transfer in the catalytic hydrogenation of hydrocarbons was studied theoretically and experimentally. For the model of a stationary diffusion film around a catalyst pellet, an approximate solution of Maxwell-Stefan equations was obtained, which allowed the multicomponent diffusion problem to be reduced to a Fick equation involving a pseudobinary effective diffusion coefficient. A comparison was made between the theoretical and experimental results for the hydrogenation of α-methylstyrene, octene, and their mixtures.