Continuous hydrogenation using ACMC-Pd
monolith catalysts was studied
for four chemistries of industrial interest. The chemistry was run
in a 30.5 cm catalyst bed with repeated passes to simulate a longer
commercial catalyst bed in which >97% conversion would be completed
in a single pass of the reactor with no recycle. The selected liquid
flow rate (0.086 cm/s) enabled >97% conversion for the four chemistries
using practical ranges of temperature (60–180 °C), pressure
(0.348 to 3.48 MPa), and required bed lengths (4.3 to 6.1 m). The
unsaturated bonds hydrogenated included nitro, carbonyl, olefin, and
aromatic bond types. The most challenging reaction was the conversion
of a neat olefinic/aromatic substrate (requiring 7 moles of hydrogen
per mole of product) run with a low-temperature/high-temperature reactor
configuration. The same catalyst was used for all of the chemistries,
and the changeover from one chemistry to another involved simple solvent/substrate
rinses of the reactor. The data can be used to estimate the number
of commercial reactor tubes, temperature, pressure, and bed length
needed for the production of commercial quantities of specialty and
pharmaceutical chemicals.