Hydration of propylene oxide using ion-exchange resin catalyst in a slurry reactor

Abstract

Kinetics of hydration of propylene oxide using an ion-exchange resin catalyst in a slurry reactor was studied. The kinetics of homogeneous, uncatalyzed reaction was studied separately and used to obtain heterogeneous reaction kinetics. The homogeneous reaction was found to be 0.43 order with respect to propylene oxide concentration. The heterogeneous reaction was found to have intraparticle diffusional resistance under certain conditions. The intrinsic kinetic parameters and effective diffusivity were obtained from these data. The heterogeneous reaction was found to be 0.55 order with respect to propylene oxide concentration. The activation energies obtained for homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions were 51.5 and 53.4 kJ/mol, respectively. A theoretical model incorporating all the mass transfer resistances has been proposed.