One-dimensional isothermal multicomponent diffusion-reaction model and its application to methanol synthesis over commercial Cu-based catalyst

The present work was a study on global reaction rate of methanol synthesis. We measured experimentally the global reaction rate in the internal recycle gradientless reactor over catalyst SC309. The diffusion-reaction model of methanol synthesis was suggested. For model we chose the hydrogenation of CO and CO₂ as key reaction. CO and CO₂ were key components in our model. The internal diffusion effectiveness factors of CO and CO₂ in the catalyst were calculated by the numerical integration. A comparison with the experiment showed that all the absolute values of the relative error were less than 10%. The simulation results showed that decreasing reaction temperature and catalyst diameter were conducive to reduce the influence of the internal diffusion on the methanol synthesis.