Estimation of the catalyst pellet activity distribution from kinetic data

Abstract

The possibility of estimating the activity distribution inside an industrial catalyst pellet from measurements of the composition of the outlet stream of a laboratory stirred tank reactor vs volumetric flow rate is discussed. It is assumed that the form of the reaction rate expression for the chosen testing reaction is known and the value of the corresponding reaction rate constant can be evaluated from the measurements in the kinetic region on the crushed pellet. A procedure is proposed which allows to determine whether the activity distribution estimation is feasible, and demands on the model test reaction are discussed. The estimation technique is applied to simulated (both precise and noisy) data.