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Remarks on studies for direct production of phenol in conventional and membrane reactors
Author(s) -
Molinari Raffaele,
Poerio Teresa
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
asia‐pacific journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.348
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1932-2143
pISSN - 1932-2135
DOI - 10.1002/apj.369
Subject(s) - phenol , benzene , acetone , chemistry , petrochemical , yield (engineering) , cumene , production (economics) , process engineering , organic chemistry , materials science , engineering , metallurgy , economics , macroeconomics
The great interest in the oxidation reaction of benzene to phenol is linked to some disadvantages of the cumene process, such as environmental impact, production of an explosive intermediate, a multi‐step process (which involves (1) difficulty to achieve high phenol yield, in relation to the benzene used and (2) high capital investment), and a high acetone production as a co‐product which results in an over supply in the market. In this paper, we discuss various studies concerning a new approach based on a one‐step and acetone‐free method for phenol production. Particular attention is devoted to phenol production processes using various configurations of membrane reactors (MRs) and a photocatalytic membrane reactor (PMR). In particular, the biphasic MR allowed to achieving high selectivity values (97–98%). The described studies have been classified according to oxidant type such as N 2 O, O 2 , and H 2 O 2 . Each of them shows that direct oxidation of benzene to phenol is a difficult task and further efforts are needed to search and replace the three step traditional process of converting benzene into phenol with a process of direct oxidation. Copyright © 2009 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.