Work Package 1.1 - Analysis of multiphase processes and selection of concepts and technologies
Principal Investigator: Prof. M. Grünewald (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Scientists: Dr. P. Pfeifer (KIT), Julia Riese (RUB)
Main scientific goals:
- Identify base case production processes for two types of reaction.
- Characterize those processes in term of energy efficiency.
Particular tasks:
Two types of multiphase reactions are chosen for further investigation: catalytic hydrogenation of nitrobenzene to aniline and the auto catalytic oxidation of hydrocarbons to hydro peroxides. The hydrogenation of nitrobenzene is a strongly exothermic reaction with high conversion. Due to this fact energy harvesting from the reactor at high temperature level is possible. It is technical standard to perform this reaction in a solid catalyzed gas phase reactor which requires initial evaporation of the nitrobenzene feed. Thus a high pressure process in liquid phase is thought to increase the overall process efficiency.
In contrast to this, the auto catalytic oxidation of hydrocarbons suffers from limited conversion in liquid phase, due to an inverse relation between conversion and selectivity, and fundamental understanding of the reaction mechanism is required to improve the overall process efficiency.
To improve reactor performance in sense of energy efficiency the goal of this project is to establish new reactor concepts and modes of operation for these model reactions. To evaluate these new concepts, base case studies have to be carried out. Therefore, a literature review on possible production processes for these reactions is performed to identify market potentials, product qualities, costs and environmental influences. The most auspicious processes are chosen for further investigation in WP 1.2 and WP 1.3 and as base case to classify possible new concepts.