Essentials of Chemical Reaction Engineering, 2nd Edition

10. Catalysis and Catalytic Reactors

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.

—G. K. Chesterton

Overview. The objectives of this chapter are to develop an understanding of catalysts, reaction mechanisms, and catalytic reactor design. Specifically, after reading this chapter one should be able to

• Define a catalyst and describe its properties.

• Describe the steps in a catalytic reaction and in chemical vapor deposition (CVD).

• Suggest a mechanism and apply the concept of a rate-limiting step to derive a rate law.

• Use nonlinear regression to determine the rate law and rate-law parameters that best fit the data.

• Use the rate law parameters to design PBRs and fluidized CSTRs.

• Describe the analogy ...