ABSTRACT
Conventional fixed-bed catalytic reactors have obvious disadvantages, such as maldistributions of various kinds (resulting in nonuniform access of reactants to the catalytic surface and nonoptimal local process conditions), large pressure drop over the bed, and sensitivity to fouling by dust. Due to the random and chaotic character of a fixed bed, precision in scale-up, modeling, and design of conventional reactors is limited and, moreover, there is a limited number of degrees of freedom in design. An example of the latter is the particle diameter. On the one hand, this should be small in general in view of catalytic activity and selectivity. On the other hand, the smaller the particle the greater the pressure drop.
