Packed Bed Reactors for Academic Experimentation - Page 4 of 5

Results

Final Prototype

The final prototype of our approach is shown in Figure 14.

Figure 14. The final setup of the reactors system. The main components are labeled on the figure.

Testing the GC

After going through the process of repairing the GC and given the importance of an in-line GC, as desired by the Project Sponsor, it was essential to test the GC. The reactant gases were analyzed using the GOW-MAC GC. The three different peaks indicate the presence of three distinct gases, as expected.

Figure 15. The GOW-MAC GC output using LabVIEW. The chromatogram is for a 60% Ar, 30% H₂, and 10% CO₂ mixture. A 2 mL sample loop was used for this injection. The carrier gas is He with a flow rate of 18 mL/min. The stationary phase is Porapak Type Q 80-100 Mesh. A 4-feet column was used with its temperature set at 30 °C.

The chromatogram results from the GOW-MAC GC were confirmed by using discrete injections into a Buck-Scientific GC. The chromatogram from the Buck-Scientific GC is shown in Figure 16.

Figure 16. The Buck-Scientific GC output. The chromatogram is for a 60% Ar, 30% H₂, and 10% CO₂ mixture. A 6 mL discrete injection was analyzed. The carrier gas is He with a flow rate of 21.8 mL/min. The stationary phase is Porapak Type Q 80-100 Mesh. A 4-feet column was used with its temperature set at 80 °C. The three observed peaks agree with those detected by the GOW-MAC GC.

To put this together, a reactor was loaded with a P-K-Mo₂C catalyst and run for 2 hours. However, due to the large amount of time needed to obtain products with this catalyst, no products were observed in the span of two hours. The results are shown in Figure 17.

Figure 17. P-K-Mo₂C was used as a catalyst loading (left). The initial chromatogram (middle) matches that of the reactants gases. After 120 mins on stream (right), no new peaks were observed.

Due to the oxophilic nature of the transition metal carbides (P-K-Mo₂C), no products were formed after 120 mins on stream. Juneau et al.^[1] collected data after reduction for 2 hours at 300 psi and 300 °C and after exposure to stream for 7-12 hrs.