Epoxidation of ethylene to ethylene oxide is a very demanding process: the reaction is highly exothermic and the selectivity is always an issue, because the total oxidation to carbon dioxide and water should be avoided. Silver is the catalytically active metal for this process. The generally accepted view on the reaction mechanism is that ethylene epoxidation and total oxidation are essentially parallel processes, i.e. ethylene oxide formation and total oxidation proceed in parallel, while the role of the consecutive pathway, oxidation of ethylene oxide plays a minor role. Several hypotheses have been proposed for explaining the reaction mechanism of the ethylene oxidation on silver surface. The following rate expression was used for the ethylene epoxidation and total oxidation.
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