Selective methane oxidation over promoted oxide catalysts. Quarterly report, June--August 1995

The partial oxidation of methane to oxygenates involves a complex network of heterogeneous and homogeneous free radical reactions, particularly under higher temperatures and pressures. It is generally difficult to separately study the relative importance of each of these types of reactions during the reaction process by experimental means. However, in order to maximize the oxygenate yields, better reactor/reaction designs, such as the double-bed reactor configuration explored previously in this project, are needed. For these tasks, it is often necessary to understand the extent to which each of these two different types of reactions contributes to the reaction process. Therefore, during this quarter, efforts were made in this aspect through a kinetic modeling approach. With such an approach, one can readily examine the contribution of each and every reaction step in the reaction process, simply by including or excluding it from the model