Kinetics of chemical processes: From molecular to industrial scale

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Combining spectroscopic and transient kinetic techniques provides access to the identification and quantification of active sites and corresponding turnover frequencies of catalyzed reactions [1]. Ab initio calculated rate coefficients combined with network generation codes allow so-called microkinetic models accounting for all relevant elementary steps of complex reaction networks. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) account for the scale-dependent transport of mass, energy and momentum and, hence, renders the design of an industrial process based on the intrinsic chemical kinetics possible. These theoretical and experimental achievements cannot be a substitute for the insights provided by the analysis of a catalytic cycle in terms of a limited number of kinetically significant steps [2]. We analyse the kinetics of a single-path reaction represented as a closed sequence of two steps [3]. We discuss some examples of chemical looping processes providing, in contrast to catalytic technology, the possibility to perform the steps of a closed sequence at different conditions.