A kinetic study of the complete oxidation of ethene, propane and their mixtures on a Pd/Al2O3 catalyst

The complete oxidation of ethene and propane as individual hydrocarbons and of their mixtures on a Pd/Al2O3 catalyst has been studied using an internal recycle reactor. The pressure was varied from 1.6¿5 bar and the temperature from 180¿220 °C for ethene oxidation and from 280¿330 °C for propane oxidation. The maximum hydrocarbon concentration was ca. 3000 ppm or 0.3vol.%. The effect of the reaction products and the co-educt on the kinetics was investigated and it is shown that whereas water significantly retards the oxidation, the influence of CO2 is negligible. Propane oxidation is inhibited by ethene. Such inhibition can only partly be explained by the additional water formed due to the combustion of ethene. The conversions in these experiments studied ranged between 70% and 90% for ethene and between 15% and 30% for propane, respectively. Four different rate expressions have been tested bearing in mind that the influence of water must be taken into account in any adequate description of the experimental data. The best-fitting rate expression described the experimental data to within an average error of 17% for ethene and 13% for propane, respectively. A comparison of the results with data from dynamic experiments showed a reasonable agreement