Flow reactors for testing gas-solid catalytic reactions

Flow reactors for testing gas-solid catalytic reactions 

Flow reactors are very convenient especially for catalyst testing. However, one must be very careful when collecting and interpreting the flow reactor 

There are two fundamental types of experimental reactors for measuring solid catalyzed reaction rates integral and differential. The integral reactor consists essentially of a tube of diameter less than 3 cm filled with, say, W grams of catalyst. Each run comprises steady-state operation at a given feed rate, and based on several such runs a plot of the conversion versus is prepared. Differentiation of this curve gives the rate at any given (i.e., concentration) as 

A convenient way of operating a differential reactor at integral conversions is to use a fully mixed reactor in which a constant concentration 

It is always best to operate an experimental reactor under conditions where all diffusional disguises are lifted (by using the criteria listed in the next section). A less acceptable alternative is to account for them through appropriate effectiveness factors and external transport coefficients. A number of highly sophisticated computer-controlled reactor systems are commercially available, such as the Berty recycle reactor. Many of them are available with software and appropriate interfacing that can set and implement the experiments for each of a series of sequential runs (see, e.g., Mandler et al., 1983), resulting in the emergence of the most acceptable model at the end of the exercise. 

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