Preliminary Studies on the Partial Oxidation of Isobutane with Oxygen in Multiphase Flows.

Oxidation of hydrocarbon is an industrially important reaction. Many valuable chemicals are synthesized by the oxidation of relatively cheap raw materials derived from petroleum. The oxidation of isobutane is one of the most important oxidation oxidation processes. For example, isobutane oxidation can be conducted as the preoxidation in oxirane process to produce propylene oxide and tert.-butanol, in which propylene oxide and TBA are important industrial raw materials and widely used in the syntheses of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and other fine chemicals (Qi et al., 2014).
In more recent times, there is more and more interest of researchers in the application of microreactors in chemical engineering because of the opportunities of microreactors in chemical process development and intensification, such as excellent heat and mass transfer (Kashid et al., 2014). In this thesis, the oxidation of isobutane in two-phase flow is investigated in a microreactor (100 m long, 1mm ID). The experiments were carried out under different conditions. The start-up behavior of the oxidation of isobutane has been investigated and discussed. In addition, the effect of temperature, pressure, residence time, oxygen-isobutene ratio, the nitrogen dilution and initiator concentration on the performance of isobutane has also been preliminary investigated and discussed. Furthermore, the rate constant of isobutene oxidation has been calculated for 130 °C.