Chromatographic reactor first-order reaction

Increased conversion and product purity are not the only benefits of simultaneous separation during the reaction. The chromatographic reactor was also found to be a very suitable tool for studying kinetics and mechanisms of chemical and biochemical reactions. Some recent publications describe the results on investigation of autocatalytic reactions [135], first-order reversible reactions [136], and estimation of enantioselectivity [137,138]. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the details, but the interested reader is referred to an overview published by Jeng and Langer [139]. 

Another study was performed on a catalytic hydrogenation of 1,3,5-trimethyl-benzene to 1,3,4-trimethylcyclohexane, which is a typical first-order reversible reaction [168]. By optimizing various operating conditions it was possible to achieve a product purity of 96% and a reactant conversion of 0.83 compared to a thermodynamic equilibrium conversion of only 0.4. The results were successfully described with a mathematical model derived by the same authors [169]. Comparison to a real countercurrent moving bed chromatographic reactor yielded very similar results for both types [170]. 

Langer and Patton, who put it under the framework of the ideal chromatographic reactor (ICR) model. The correspondence of the rate constants from first-order irreversible reactions was demonstrated by them as well as by Gil-Av and Herzberg-Minzly. ... 

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