New Equipment for Laboratory Studies of Heterogeneously Catalyzed Reactive Distillation

In this paper, novel equipment for laboratory studies of heterogeneously catalyzed reactive distillation is described. The so called D+R tray equipment consists of a combination of conventional bubble cap trays with sections that are filled with catalyst and through which the liquid flows when it passes from one distillation tray down to the next. It is designed so that the catalyst can be easily changed, and its amount can be flexibly chosen. In the present study, D+R tray equipment built in glass in the 50 mm diameter scale was investigated. The pressure drop is only slightly higher than that of a standard distillation tray alone and it allows the same fluid dynamic capacity. In order to characterize the properties of the equipment as a reactor, residence time distribution (RTD) measurements were carried out. For this purpose, the equipment was modified so that only the reactive section could be studied. Still, the RTD of the catalytic bed cannot be investigated directly. It was therefore determined based on accompanying computational fluid dynamics simulations. The RTD of the catalytic bed can be described well by a simple dispersion model with a Bodenstein number of 60–65, showing that it basically has plug flow characteristics.