Supercritical hydrogenation of aromatic compounds

S. PEREDA; S.B. BOTTINI; E.A. BRIGNOLE

Florianopolis, Brazil

Conferencia; V Brazilian Meeting on Supercritical Fluids; 2004

Traditional gas-liquid catalyzed hydrogenation reactions face the problem of low reaction rates and selectivity, due to high mass-transport resistance and low gas solubility in the liquid phase. This problem can be circumvented by the addition of a supercritical fluid, to bring both, reactants and reaction products, into a homogeneous phase. A revision of recent publications on experimental studies in batch and continuous supercritical reactors shows that overlooking phase equilibrium conditions may lead to wrong conclusions about the effect of operating variables on reaction rates and selectivity.