INVESTIGATION OF A COMPLEX-REACTION NETWORK - II - KINETICS, MECHANISM AND PARAMETER-ESTIMATION

Conventional strategies for discrimination of intrinsic and apparent k inetics from crushed-and whole-catalyst-pellet experimental data, resp ectively, do not yield satisfactory results for the reaction network i n the manufacture of alpha-aminomethyl-2-furanmethanol (aminoalcohol) from alpha-nitromethyl-2-furanmethanol (nitroalcohol). Laboratory tric kle-bed reactor tests in the range of concentration and product yield of commercial interest are utilized to yield a reasonable set of kinet ic parameters, which are otherwise unobtainable. This is accomplished by proposing a reaction network, a plausible mechanism and optimizing the kinetic parameters based on the reactor-model-generated performanc e data to fit experimental output concentrations of all species for th e entire set of experiments. A complex reaction network for the key re actions in the system is developed based on the reaction scheme in Par t I. Fitting of trickle-bed reactor data to this model is attempted to yield an insight into the actual kinetics. The results show promise o f obtaining an overall network kinetic model, even with the limited da ta available.