Work

Low pressure-drop CuO/CeO2/UiO-66 catalysts for H2 purification

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Pressure drop is responsible of a great part of the energy cost in industry due the energy consumed by pumps driving a fluid through the installation, and heterogeneous catalysis industrial processes suffer from this pressure drop penalty. This study demonstrates that UiO66 significantly improves the catalytic performance of the CuO/CeO2 active phase for preferential CO oxidation in H2 streams with regard to a conventional g-Al2O3 carrier due to the particular porous and crystalline properties of MOF materials. A packed bed of UiO66 produces very low-pressure drop in comparison to conventional catalytic carriers, such as g-Al2O3 or beta zeolite, being 4 times lower for UiO66 than for g-Al2O3 under 2 L/min flow of N2, and this ratio increases and approaches ∞ for lower gas flow rates. This feature of UiO66 not only decreases the energy required to pump gases through the catalytic bed, but also improves catalytic performance of UiO66-supported catalysts due to the enhanced gas diffusion into the catalytic bed. The reaction gases flow through the interparticle space left by the catalyst in a packed bed of CuO/CeO2/g-Al2O3, and this produces high pressure drop, preferential gas pathways and mass transport limitations, negatively affecting the reaction rate. On the contrary, the reaction gases are able to flow through the UiO66 material without channel constrictions, and the CuO/CeO2/UiO66 catalysts avoid the gas diffusion restrictions of conventional catalysts.

Source: Chemical Engineering Journal

DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2024.155853