Abstract
A rapid pressure swing reaction (RPSR) process combines the operations of gas separation by rapid-cycle pressure swing adsorption (RPSA) and catalytic reaction. The hybrid reactor has potential applications to equilibrium limited reactions, in which selective adsorption of reaction species can lead to enhancement in conversion and bulk separation of product species. In this work analytical criteria derived for simplified process configurations are used to guide the selection of adsorbents and catalysts which may lead to reaction enhancement for the 1-butene dehydrogenation reaction scheme A⇆ B + C. Two configurations of the RPSR process are described, and theoretically and experimentally evaluated for the dehydrogenation of 1-butene to 1,3 butadiene over an admixture of CrO2-alumina catalyst and a zeolite K-Y adsorbent. Experimental results show significant concentration of 1,3-butadiene relative to unreacted butene in a particular exit stream, and the beneficial effects of adsorptive separation in lowering the rate of catalyst deactivation due to coking. Simulation data predicts that under certain design conditions an improvement in reactant conversion over the equilibrium limit of the fixed-bed operation is observed, with the additional benefit of bulk separation of reaction products. © 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.