Investigation of a fixed‐bed pilot plant reactor by dynamic experimentation. Part 1. Apparatus and experimental results

Abstract

AbstractA non‐isothermal, non‐adiabatic fixed‐bed pilot reactor specially designed for fast measurement of axial and radial temperature and concentration profiles during dynamic experiments is described. The pilot plant is interfaced to a process computer and facilitates conducting different types of dynamic experiments, such as those with simultaneous un‐correlated periodic changes of the process variables. This type of dynamic experiments proved to be most efficient for collecting the data necessary for reactor modelling. Axial and radial temperature and concentration profiles in the fixed bed were measured during catalytic hydrogenation of toluene on an industrial nickel catalyst. Peak shaped perturbations were employed to study the parametric sensitivity of the reactor behaviour and to estimate the reaction kinetics.