DEVELOPMENT AND MODELING OF A LOOP FLUIDIZED-BED REACTOR WITH BAFFLE FOR PROPYLENE AMMOXIDATION

A loop, with baffle, fluidized bed reactor (LBR) is proposed in this w ork. The reactor is developed to match the redox reaction mechanism of catalytic propylene ammoxidation to acrylonitrile. According to its d evelopmental concept, it is able to be applied not only in acrylonitri le synthesis via propylene ammoxidation but also in most of olefins se lective ammoxidation and oxidation reactions. In this paper, the relat ionship between mass transfer coefficient, catalyst recycle rate and t he internal structure, operating conditions are investigated in a phi 300 mm cold model fluidized bed. The mathematical model is built up fo r the reactor. The computational results for propylene ammoxidation ba sed on this model show reasonable good agreement with the phi 219 mm p ilot plant data. The prediction of larger scale plant based on this mo del has been done, and the phi 2800 mm pilot plant data are listed in this paper. The LBR is capable of increasing more than 2.5% selectivit y to acrylonitrile when compared with the commercial type reactor when it is employed in propylene ammoxidation.