BKF3472 Chemical Reaction Engineering II Question 1

Assignment 1

Assume that glycerol (G) steam (W) reforming follows the following sequence:

Step (3)

If you further assumed that sequence 3 is the rate determining step and, CH2OH-X and H-X are the most abundantly available reactive species, show that:

Using the following data, solve for krxn, KG and KW employing the non-linear regression technique. Run No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 PG (atm) 1 1 1 3 5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 PW (atm) 1 3 5 3 3 3 5 3 1 Rate (mol kgcat-1 s-1) 1.04 3.13 5.21 3.82 4.19 2.391 3.867 2.199 0.75

Question 2 Dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene (elementary irreversible catalytic reaction) C2H6 C2H4 + H2 is to be carried out in a MBR at 550oC. This reactor contains 10 kg of tin-promoted platinum catalyst. The entering ethane is at partial pressure of 50 kPa. The catalyst decay law is zero order with kD = 0.4 s-1 and k = 2.0 dm6/(mol. kgcat.s) and the volumetric flow rate is vo = 1.5 dm3/s. (a) What is the concentration of the entering ethane (b) What is the conversion for a catalyst feed rate of 1.0 kg/s? (c) What catalyst loading necessary to achieve 40% conversion? (d) Determine the catalyst loading rate for zero catalyst activity at the reactor exit?

-SUBMIT BY 12th APRIL 2013-