Kinetic study of the toluene oxidation in homogeneous liquid phase

Abstract

To better understand the interplay of fluid dynamics, mass transport, and chemical reactions in multi-phase reactors, each of these effects needs to be studied separately. In particular, reactions are hard to study separately from mass transport. In this work, using a new reactor concept a macroscopic reaction kinetics of the oxidation of toluene is determined in homogeneous liquid-phase. By operating at elevated pressure, mass transport limitations are avoided. The reactor concept requires the measurement of the oxygen concentration within the organic liquid phase, which further allows to setup an atomic oxygen balance. Running experiments at different oxygen flow rates, a kinetic model was parameterized, which describes the experimental results for oxygen flow rates in an industrially relevant range. Since the developed model has no mass transport limitations, it can be used in processes where independent modelling of mass transport and chemical reactions are combined, such as with computational fluid dynamics.