Kinetic studies on oxidative coupling of methane to ethylene over catalysts supported by mixed-oxides

A main component in producing ethylene from natural is methane. By using oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) reaction is a promising route. Catalytic tubular reactors are found to have advantages in terms of oxygen supply to the catalyst. To achieve this objective, a unified time-independent one-dimensional pseudo-homogeneous model is developed. Changing the inlet conditions, the sensitivity of the proposed model is analysed. Investigations were made in terms of parametric sensitivity and fixed bed reactor response by changing inlet flow velocities, concentrations and temperatures. The kinetic data of the reactions involved were estimated using linear regression. The effect of variables like, methane flow velocities, operating conditions, temperature, properties of catalysts on methane conversion and yield are studied from simulation results. All the feasible reactions for OCM are included in the proposed scheme of the reactions. The present work combines reaction engineering aspects with the experimental kinetic results previously obtained to predict OCM reactor performance under various operating conditions. Model equations are solved using the Runge Kutta method. The simulated results using the proposed kinetic model matched the experimental results of OCM reaction within a deviation range of ±20%.