General aspects of catalyst testing

Abstract

The most critical difficulty in catalyst testing is to obtain information about the catalyst performance without the influence of transport phenomena due to the flow, the catalyst, and the reactor geometry. In this paper, criteria for the absence of external and internal concentration and temperature gradients are given in a convenient form. Comparison of various testing reactors is presented and occurrence of a temperature gradient in a packed bed reactor is illustrated by an example. Practical guidelines for testing procedures are also given.