No abstract

Recently, a laboratory setup for microwave-based characterization of powder samples at elevated temperatures and different gas atmospheres was presented. The setup is particularly interesting for operando investigations on typical materials for exhaust gas aftertreatment. By using the microwave cavity perturbation method, where the powder is placed inside a cavity resonator, the change of the resonant properties provides information about changes in the dielectric properties of the sample. However, determining the exact complex permittivity of the powder samples is not simple. Up to now, a simplified microwave cavity perturbation theory had been applied to estimate the bulk properties of the powders. In this study, an extended approach is presented which allows to determine the dielectric properties of the powder materials more correctly. It accounts for the electric field distribution in the resonator, the depolarization of the sample and the effect of the powder filling. The individual method combines findings from simulations and recognized analytical approaches and can be used for investigations on a wide range of materials and sample geometries. This work provides a more accurate evaluation of the dielectric powder properties and has the potential to enhance the understanding of the microwave behavior of storage materials for exhaust gas aftertreatment, especially with regard to the application of microwave-based catalyst state diagnosis.

Abstract.Microchannel reactors promise to display unusually fast response behavior to sharp changes of feed composition in heterogeneous catalytic systems. In an attempt to use this feature for the elucidation of the transient kinetics and possibly for performance enhancement, three model reaction systems are selected. CFD assisted reactor design and catalyst preparation studies are presented.

A planar microstrip ring resonator structure on alumina was developed using the commercial FEM software COMSOL. Design parameters were evaluated, eventually leading to an optimized design of a miniaturized microwave gas sensor. The sensor was covered with a zeolite film. The device was successfully operated at around 8.5 GHz at room temperature as a humidity sensor. In the next step, an additional planar heater will be included on the reverse side of the resonator structure to allow for testing of gas-sensitive materials under sensor conditions.

A novel gas-phase process has been developed that allows direct two-step conversion of butane into pentanals with high activity and selectivity. The process consists of alkane dehydrogenation over a heterogeneous Cr/Al 2 O 3 catalyst followed by direct gas-phase hydroformylation using advanced supported ionic liquid phase (SILP) catalysis. The latter step uses rhodium complexes modified with the diphosphite ligands biphephos (BP) and benzopinacol to convert the butane/butene mixture from the dehydrogenation step efficiently into aldehydes. The use of the BP ligand results in improved yields of linear pentanal because SILP systems with this ligand are active for both isomerization and hydroformylation. V C 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: [893][894][895][896][897] 2015