Thermal destruction of benzene

The thermal destruction of benzene in methane/air hue gas is studied experi mentally using an atmospheric laminar flow reactor in laboratory scale. The reactor is operated at four different fuel equivalent ratios (phi = 0.06, 0.1, 0.5, 3.7), and temperatures in the range from 850 to 973 K and realise s a residence time of 5 s. Stable-species concentrations are measured by ga s chromatography (GC) and high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC), where phenol, acetylene, formaldehyde, acrolein, methane and acetaldehyde are th e major hydrocarbon products besides CO and CO2. The augmentation of the te mperature from 850 to 973 K increases the benzene conversion rate from 55% to 99%. The experimental results for one fuel equivalent ratio (phi = 0.5) are compared to the benzene model proposed by Emdee et al. (J. Phys. Chem. 92 (1992) 2151-2161). A fair agreement is observed for the benzene consumpt ion and the CO production throughout the temperature range considered here. The small hydrocarbons are not very well matched, which requires further r esearch on the sub-models. Our experimental results on laboratory scale pro vide a database for the modelling of benzene oxidation in waste incinerator s. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.