Parameters of an electrokinetic reactor design for vanadium recovery from fluid catalytic cracking catalysts

The goal of this study was to evaluate the performance of electrokinetic remediation for vanadium removal from deactivated catalysts. In this study a fixed-bed reactor was used to lengthening the catalyst life cycle. Parameters such as the sulfuric acid electrolyte concentration and the applied electric potential were evaluated to determine a response function for the vanadium removal percentage. Because there are no mathematical models that fit the system and due to the complexity of such a system, the use of a 2k factorial design statistical techniques with a center point, was chosen to obtain the desired responses. A 0.5 mol·L−1 sulfuric acid concentration and an electric potential of 5 V were found to provide the best operating conditions. In this study, 22.99% of catalyst vanadium content was removed within 48 h and 81.62 kWh/kg energy consumption.