2023

Mouad Hachhach; Vincenzo Russo; Dmitry Yu Murzin; Tapio Salmi

<p>A comprehensive trickle bed reactor model for simulation purposes was developed in this work As an industrially relevant case study, the model was applied on selective sugar oxidation to sugar acid on gold catalyst extrudates. The obtained results revealed that the maximum conversion for extrudates is only 25% for a reactor length of 0.5 m and diameter of 1 cm, which is due to slow mass transfer inside the catalyst layer and external mass transfer limitations. Variation of the residence time and the reactor length revealed that a reactor length of 2m minimum is required to achieve complete conversion of the sugar (arabinose) to the corresponding sugar acid (arabinonic acid).</p>