A RECENT troubleshooting case involved a trickle-bed reactor with two major challenges. The first was concern over unwanted catalytic action while the reactor is in standby mode with no liquid flow. The second was the need to process a feed multiple times through the reactor to meet the product specifications. The reactor handles a variety of feeds and selectively hydrogenates impurities over a stabilized nickel catalyst. Between campaigns on a specific feed, the reactor might sit idle for weeks or months. The reaction requires adding hydrogen to liquid feed. The main feed is solid at ambient conditions and, so, needs raising to a somewhat higher temperature to become liquid. If the temperature then drops too low, the feed viscosity could rise high enough for the material to rest in the catalyst structure and not flow.
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