Abstract

TANDIOY, O.M.; GIL, I.D.  and  SANCHEZ, O.F.. Modeling of maleic anhydride production from a mixture of n-butane and butenes in fluidized bed reactor. Lat. Am. appl. res. [online]. 2009, vol.39, n.1, pp.19-26. ISSN 0327-0793.

The aim of this work was to model the catalytic oxidation of n-butane and butenes (Raffinate II) mixture to maleic anhydride (MAN) over a vanadium-phosphorus oxide (VPO) catalyst in a fluidized bed reactor (FBR). The three phase Kunni-Levenspiel hydrodynamic model (K-L) was used to describe the reactor. The obtained differential equations were solved by the fourth order Runge-Kutta numeric method. The K-L model was validated by a fitting comparison with reported experimental data for MAN production from n-butane. For the n-butane and Raffinate mixture, the maximum calculated MAN yield was about 52% over the FBR emulsion with a 49% of Raffinate conversion, and 51% of MAN selectivity. As a conclusion, the simulation program demonstrated a suitable performance to predict MAN selectivity, reactants conversion, and MAN and reactants concentration profiles.

Keywords : Maleic Anhydride; Fluidized Bed Reactor; N-butane; Raffinate II.

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