Development of a Robust Fixed-Bed Reactor Model for Supercritical Citral Hydrogenation.

The hydrogenation of citral in a fixed-bed reactor by using supercritical carbon dioxide was studied. A numerical model was set up by using the commercial software Aspen Custom Modeler®. By applying literature experimental data, a parameter estimation for the kinetic parameters was carried out. A good fit was reached with the presented model. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis was performed. The influence of process pressure, inlet CO2 and H2 concentration, and catalyst particle size on conversion, reactor length, space time yield, yield of the intermediate product 3,7-dimethyl-2-octenal, and pressure drop was investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]