ABSTRACT
The oxidation of propylene to acrylic acid over Pd-supported hydrophobic catalysts has been studied in a slurry and a trickle bed reactor. Hydrophobic catalyst was shown to have much higher activity than hydrophilic catalyst due to its advantage of low mass transfer resistance. Key words: hydrophobic catalyst, propylene oxidation
Introduction
Palladium-catalyzed propylene oxidation to acrylic acid has advantages of low reaction temperature and a single-step process compared to the current commercial process using metal oxides catalysts. Low space-time yield is the main problem for the commercializating this process. Polymer-supported hydrophobic catalysts have been shown to have higher efficiency than hydrophilic catalysts for this process ( l, ·2). In this work, propylene oxidation over hydrophobic catalyst was studied in slurry and trickle bed reactors. A comparison between the performances of hydrophilic and hydrophobic catalysts is discussed.
