Lecture on

The Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactor

Instructor

Prof. Bishnupada Mandal

Room No. 102, Block - K
Department of Chemical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati

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 Lecture : The Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactors

Lecture Outline
• Recap on previous lecture
• Introduction
• The Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactors
 Introduction
 Reactant gas can be made to
contact solid catalyst in many ways,
and each has its specific advantages
and disadvantages.
 Figure 1 illustrates a number of
these contacting patterns.
 These may be divided into two broad
types, the fixed bed reactors of Fig.
1(a-c) and the fluidized-bed reactors
of Fig. 1(d-f).
 The moving-bed reactor of Fig. 1g is
an intermediate case which
embodies some of the advantages
and some of the disadvantages of
fixed-bed and fluidized-bed reactors.
 The Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactor
 Let us compare the merits of these reactor types:
Point 1:
 In passing through fixed beds, gases approximate plug flow.
 It is quite different with bubbling fluidized beds where the flow is
complex and not well known, but certainly far from plug flow, and
with considerable by-passing.
 This behavior is unsatisfactory from the standpoint of effective
contacting and requires much more catalyst for high gas
conversion, and greatly depresses the amount of intermediate
which can be formed in series reactions.
 Hence, if efficient contacting in a reactor is of primary importance,
then the fixed bed is favored.
 The Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactor
Point 2:
 Effective temperature control of large fixed beds can be difficult
because such systems are characterized by a low heat
conductivity.
 Thus in highly exothermic reactions hot spots or moving hot fronts
are likely to develop which may ruin the catalyst.
 In contrast with this, the rapid mixing of solids in fluidized beds
allows easily and reliably controlled, practically isothermal,
operations.
 So if operations are to be restricted within a narrow temperature
range, either because of the explosive nature of the reaction or
because of product distribution considerations, then the fluidized
bed is favored.
 The Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactor
Point 3:
 Fixed beds cannot use very small sizes of catalyst because of
plugging and high-pressure drop, whereas fluidized beds are well
able to use small-size particles.
 Thus for very fast reactions in which pore and film diffusion may
influence the rate, the fluidized bed with its vigorous gas-solid
contacting and small particles will allow a much more effective use
of the catalyst.
Point 4:
 If the catalyst has to be treated (regenerated) frequently because it
deactivates rapidly, then the liquid-like fluidized state allows it to be
pumped easily from unit to unit. This feature of fluidized contacting
offers overwhelming advantages over fixed bed operations for such
solids.
 The Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactor

 The fixed bed catalytic reactor is one of the most widely used reactor
types in the refining and petrochemicals industry.
 In its simplest form, it is simply a tube filled with solid catalyst
through which gaseous (or, less frequently, liquid) reactants flow and
are converted into products.
 When a new process is to be developed, this is often the first type of
reactor to be considered.
 Froment and Bischoff present a list of large-scale refining and
petrochemical processes that are carried out in fixed bed reactors.
On the pages following that list, they list key factors that have led to
improvements in these processes.
 The Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactor

 Note that many of these are not due to the kind of reactor
engineering that we learn in this course, but on ‘common sense’ or
infrastructure improvements.
 An example of such an advance is the use of larger multitube
reactors, which was made possible by improved welding techniques
for making them and by increased shipping clearance for moving
them to the plant site.
 Nevertheless, we will focus on the kinetics and reactor modeling in
such systems.
 Advances in these areas have also made important contributions.
 The Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactor
 One of the first questions that we must address in designing a fixed
bed reactor is if and how we will add or remove heat to and from the
reactor.
 The simplest choice is to use an adiabatic reactor. Since heat
transfer is not an issue in this case, the reactor can be a single
vessel of relatively large diameter, will require no utilities during
steady state operation, and only a single catalyst bed will be
required.
 Unfortunately, many reactions of interest cannot be successfully
carried out in a single adiabatic reactor.
 If the reaction is sufficiently endothermic, then the temperature in
the reactor will drop as the reaction proceeds, and the reaction may
become unacceptably slow before the desired amount of reaction
has occurred.
 The Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactor
 For the case of exothermic reactions, the adiabatic reaction
temperature may be higher than economically reasonable reactor
materials can withstand, or high temperatures may lead to
unfavorable equilibria or production of unwanted byproducts.
 The next-simplest choice is to use a series of adiabatic reactors with
interstage heating or cooling. This allows us to add heat to an
endothermic reaction or remove it from an exothermic reaction while
still having separate heat exchangers and reactors, or separate heat
exchange and reaction sections within the same reactor.
 Finally, we could have continuous heat addition or removal through
the wall of the fixed bed reactor. This will require that the reactor
have fairly small diameter so that heat transfer in or out of it is fast
enough to avoid unacceptable temperature gradients in the radial
direction.
 Staged Adiabatic Packed Bed Reactors
 With proper interchange of heat and proper gas flow, staged
adiabatic packed beds become a versatile system, which is able to
approximate practically any desired temperature progression.
 Calculation and design of such a system is simple, and we can
expect that real operations will closely follow these predictions.
 We illustrate the design procedure with the single reaction AR with
any kinetics.
 This procedure can be extended to other reaction types without
difficulty.
 We first consider different ways of operating these reactors, and
then compare these and point out when one or other is favored.
 Staged Packed Beds (Plug Flow) with Intercooling
 The reasoning explained in CRE-I shows that we would like the reacting
conditions to follow the optimal temperature progression. With many
stages available this can be closely approximated, as shown in Fig.
 Staged Packed Beds (Plug Flow) with Intercooling
 For any preset number of stages the optimization of operations
reduces to minimizing the total amount of catalyst needed to achieve a
given conversion. Let us illustrate the procedure for two-stage
operations with reversible exothermic reactions. The method of attack is
shown in Fig.
 Staged Packed Beds (Plug Flow) with Intercooling
 In this figure we wish to minimize the
total area under the (1/-rA) versus XA,
curve in going from XA=0 to XA2 = some
fixed or required conversion.

 In searching for this optimum we have

three variables which we can set at: the
incoming temperature (point Ta), the
amount of catalyst used in the first
stage (locates point b along the
adiabatic), and the amount of
intercooling (locates point c along the
bc line).

 Fortunately, we are able to reduce this 3-dimensional search (5-dimensional for

three stages, etc.) to a one-dimensional search where Ta alone is guessed.
 Staged Packed Beds (Plug Flow) with Intercooling
1. Guess Ta.

2. Move along the adiabatic line until the

following condition is satisfied:

This gives point b in Fig., thus the amount

of catalyst needed in the first stage as well
as the outlet temperature from that stage.
Especially in preliminary design it may not
be convenient to use the criterion of above
equation.
A simple alternative is a trial-and-error search. Usually two or three carefully chosen
trials keeping away from low rate conditions will yield a good design, close to the
optimum.