Shouldn't catalysts shape up? Structured reactors in general and gas-liquid monolith reactors in particular

In this paper, the advantage of structuring catalytic reactors is discussed. In structured systems, the exact shape of all column internals is determined by design rather than chance. This results in two advantages for the engineer in charge of designing a reactor: (1) the structuring introduces additional characteristic length scales, leading to new degrees of freedom that allow decoupling of phenomena that otherwise would need a sub-optimal compromise and (2) full control over the entire geometry results in higher precision. Taking full control over the geometry boosts performance, especially if the catalyst is tailored to the reactor design. The monolith structure is the best-known example of a structured catalyst. We discuss the industrial benefits and practical pitfalls of this honeycomb of parallel capillaries that allows the advantages of microfluidics to be applied on an enormous scale. In this paper it is argued that the monolith is most suitable for processes that are (1) stable enough for packed-bed operation and (2) need better mass transfer than can be obtained in any conventional reactor, including the trickle bed and the stirred tank reactor. This includes several large-scale processes such as HDS. Fine chemical synthesis, where the objective of robust scale-up and predictability will never be met using stirred tanks, may equally benefit from the scalable ultra-high mass transfer that is obtained in monoliths. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.