Uncatalyzed Oxidation of Cyclohexane in the Microchannels

Abstract

The oxidation of cyclohexane in the microchannels not only improves the safety of the reaction, but also the performance of the oxidation reaction. Different gas-liquid micro mixers were used for the mixing of gas and liquid before entering into microchannels, and SIMM-V2 performed best of all. Excellent slug/plug flow can be formed in the microchannels after mixing in the gas-liquid micro mixer when the molar ratio of oxygen to cyclohexane is less than 0.5:1. The conversion of cyclohexane increased as the residence time increased, but the selectivity of cyclohexanol and cyclohexanone increased first and then decreased. At the reaction temperature of 200 °C, with the flow rate of the solvent isopropanol being 1 mL/min and the molar ratio of oxygen to cyclohexane being 0.15:1, both the conversion of cyclohexane and selectivity of cyclohexanol and cyclohexanone increased with the increase of pressure. The conversion of cyclohexane and selectivity of cyclohexanol and cyclohexanone reached 10.10% and 66.93% respectively at the pressure of 8 MPa. It is indicated that the new process by use of uncatalyzed cyclohexane oxidation in the microchannels will have very attractive prospects in the improvement of the safety, intensification of the gas-liquid mass transfer and obtaining good reactive performance. Therefore, the technology shows good potential in industrial applications.