Low temperature methanol catalyst: some aspects of process scale-up.

摘要

The low temperature liquid phase methanol synthesis technology continues to be developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). The heart of this process is a new catalyst consisting of two components: a transition metal complex (TMC) and a structured base. On dissolution in methanol, preferably methanol diluted with a cosolvent (e.g. glymes), the two components yield an active catalytic species which achieves >90% per pass syngas conversion at 95% selectivity to methanol. The catalyst performance evaluation and the process parameters optimization continue. A mimic recycle multicharge batch run has established the catalytic nature of the system and the stability of the glyme cosolvent under reaction conditions. An empirical kinetic model based on the Ultramax(reg sign) program has been proposed by solving a set of algebraic equations involving six reaction variables. Twelve additional kinetic runs were completed to test the proposed model. With prediction error of 0.031 min(sup (minus) 1) for the rate constant (k) and the R-squared of 98.5, a good agreement between actual versus predicted k values was obtained. Work continues to address other uncertainties associated with the overall methanol synthesis process scheme suggested for the new catalyst system. 9 refs., 3 figs., 2 tabs.