Continuous thermal tube reactor

Catalytic activity for the selective oxidation of H2S was tested by a continuous flow reaction in a fixed-bed quartz tube reactor with 0.5 inch inside diameter. Gaseous H2S, O2, H2, CO, CO2 and N2 were used without further purification. Water vapor (H2O) was introduced by passing N2 through a saturator. Reaction test was conducted at a pressure of 101 kPa and in the temperature range of 150 to 300 °C on a 0.6 gram catalyst sample. Gas flow rates were controlled by a mass flow controller (Brooks, 5850 TR) and the gas compositions were analyzed by an on-line gas chromotograph equipped with a chromosil 310 coliunn and a thermal conductivity detector. 

A number of pool, also called swimming pool, reactors have been built at educational institutions and research laboratories. The core in these reactors is located at the bottom of a large pool of water, 6 m deep, suspended from a bridge. The water serves as moderator, coolant, and shield. An example is the Lord nuclear reactor at the University of Michigan, started in 1957. The core is composed of fuel elements, each having 18 aluminum-clad plates of 20% enriched uranium. It operates at 2 MW, giving a thermal flux of 3 x 10 (cm -s). The reactor operates almost continuously, using a variety of beam tubes, for research purposes. 

Good heat transfer on the outside of the reactor tube is essential but not sufficient because the heat transfer is limited at low flow rates at the inside film coefficient in the reacting stream. The same holds between catalyst particles and the streaming fluid, as in the case between the fluid and inside tube wall. This is why these reactors frequently exhibit ignition-extinction phenomena and non-reproducibility of results. Laboratory research workers untrained in the field of reactor thermal stability usually observe that the rate is not a continuous function of the temperature, as the Arrhenius relationship predicts, but that a definite minimum temperature is required to start the reaction. This is not a property of the reaction but a characteristic of the given system consisting of a reaction and a particular reactor. 

Catalytic activity measurements were carried out with a fixed bed flow reactor. The reactor was a quartz tube. The flow rates were adjusted using Brooks mass flow controller units. The composition of the effluents was analyzed by gas chromatography using a dual CTRl column fi-om Alltech (porapak for CO2, N2O, molecular sieve for O2, N2, CO) with a thermal conductivity detector and a porapak Q column with a flame ionisation detector for hydrocarbons. The mixture was analyzed every 13 minutes. NO and NO2 amounts were measured continuously on-line by means of Rosemount Infi-ared Analyzers. Helium was used as carrier gas as well as diluent gas. 

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