Engineered Catalysts for MicroChannel Reactor Applications

摘要

Porous metal substrates with improved mass and heat transfer characteristics were used to design engineered catalyst structures for microchannel reactor applications. Metal substrates have advantages such as high thermal conductivity, but are difficult to integrate with refractory metal oxides often used as catalyst supports. This problem can be mitigated by incorporating an interfacial layer between the porous metal substrate surface and the catalyst layer which improves the catalyst adhesion, prevents metal surface corrosion, and minimizes the undesired side reactions catalyzed by the underlying metal substrate. The interfacial layer can be either directly grown as a native oxide layer on Al containing alloys and/or coated as a metal oxide layer using chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The described interfacial design provides a flexible method to develop engineered catalysts for a variety of microchannel reactor applications, particularly for highly endothermic or exothermic reactions under corrosive reaction conditions. Here, methane steam reforming is used as an example to demonstrate potential advantages of this approach.