Kinetics of phenol oxidation in a trickle bed reactor over active carbon catalyst

The wet air oxidation of phenol over a commercial active carbon catalyst was studied in a trickle bed reactor (TBR) in the temperature and oxygen partial pressure ranges of 120–160 ◦C and 0.1–0.2 MPa, respectively. The performance of the active carbon was compared in terms of phenol and COD destruction. The weight change of active carbon due to reaction was also measured. Finally, oxic phenol adsorption isotherms were assessed in batch conditions at 25, 125 and 160 ◦C. In order to use the conversion data obtained from the TBR for a kinetic study, special care was taken to check the kinetic control in the TBR experiments. Several kinetic models including power law or Langmuir–Hinshelwood expressions were considered to describe the catalytic oxidation of phenol over active carbon. The simple power law model with first order dependence on both phenol and oxygen concentration predicted satisfactorily the experimental data not only over the entire range of operating conditions studied, but also outside its validity range.  2005 Society of Chemical Industry