Catalyst Life Prediction Service

Services

• Alfa Chemistry Catalysts can establish a suitable catalyst life prediction model according to customer needs, and the overall trend of catalyst deactivation can be effectively predicted through the model.
• For the field of scientific research, our services focus on the dynamics and mechanism of the catalyst decay process to provide technical support for customers' scientific research projects.
• In the industry, if customers need to improve catalyst performance, we can conduct detailed attenuation studies on catalyst samples. If the customer needs to achieve the target improvement as soon as possible, we can judge the stability of the catalyst through short-term testing of batch catalyst samples. The insights derived from model studies can be used to focus on development goals and characterize a limited number of catalysts.
• If the customer's goal is to diagnose the cause of a new process problem (troubleshooting) or improve the overall process performance (process development), we can diagnose the response to the expected attenuation factor or predict the expected catalyst performance through the attenuation test.

Catalyst Decay Types

According to the relationship between the porous catalyst and the main catalytic reaction, its activity decay mechanism can be conveniently divided into four categories [1]:

(a) Parallel inactivation, such as poisoning or scaling due to deposition of by-products of the main reaction;

(b) Continuous or continuous inactivation, such as poisoning or fouling due to continuous decomposition of the main reaction product;

(c) Parallel inactivation, such as poisoning or scaling of raw material impurities;

(d) Independent deactivation, such as those structural transformations or sintering processes that occur at the reaction temperature, has nothing to do with fluid composition.

Catalyst Prediction Research Case

The ability to perform detailed analysis of the catalytic process and its deactivation phenomena is essential to maintain high productivity and product quality. A hybrid model combining first-principles models and artificial neural networks (ANN) has been used to develop a general framework to simulate industrial fixed-bed catalytic reactors (FBCR) undergoing catalyst deactivation. The model can predict the life of industrial Pd/C and CuO-ZnO-Al2O3 catalysts and the impact of operating parameters on the hydrogenation purification process and methanol production reactor.

Figure 1. The methodology for FBCR hybrid modeling. [2]

References

1. John J. Birtill. (1999). "Industrial catalyst decay: performance at plant scale, research life-tests and accelerated decay." Studies in Surface Science and Catalysis, 126: 43-62.
2. Abbas Azarpour. (2017). "A generic hybrid model development for process analysis of industrial fixed-bed catalytic reactors." Chemical Engineering Research and Design, 117: 149-167.