Theoretical studies on multifunctional catalysts with integrated adsorption sites

Adsorptive reactors represent a promising application of the multifunctional reactor concept for process intensification. The deliberate manipulation of concentration and temperature profiles resulting from the integration of an additional adsorptive functionality with heterogeneous catalytic activity can be impeded significantly by mass transfer limitations. If the multifunctionality is extended down to the particle level by using a multifunctional catalyst design the mass transfer bottleneck can be circumvented. Structured multifunctional catalyst particles offer an additional degree of freedom in reactor design. The enhancement in performance from multifunctional catalysts with integrated adsorption sites was evaluated for two reaction systems of industrial relevance using a rigorous dynamic model. Significant improvements were found when mass transfer limitations were present and a simple design procedure is presented for selecting the optimal particle structure of multifunctional catalysts.