Abstract
Three kinds of membrane reactor, porous Vycor glass, ceramic Sol-gel, and Palladium-silver membrane reactors, are used to study the dehydrogenation of pure cyclohexane. The reactors are intended to be applied as chemical heat pumps, therefore they were fed with pure cyclohexane. The experimental results show that the higher conversions exceeding the equilibrium one, αeq = 6.4%, were achieved up to 27% and 11% for Pd-Ag (PT-2), and porous Vycor glass membranes respectively. A pseudo equilibrium (PE) model was proposed to predict the conversion achieved in the reactor. In the Damkohler number (Da) range employed of 1.05–4.48, the model is in good agreement with the experimental results. The prediction becomes less accurate with increasing pressure difference.
