Investigation of a complex reaction network: II. Kinetics, mechanism and parameter estimation

Conventional strategies for discrimination of intrinsic and apparent kinetics from crushed- and whole-catalyst-pellet experimental data, respectively, do not yield satisfactory results for the reaction network in the manufacture of (α-aminomethyl-2-furanmethanol) (aminoalcohol) from αnitromethyl-2-furanmethanol (nitroalcohol). Laboratory trickle-bed reactor tests in the range of concentration and product yield of commercial interest are utilized to yield a reasonable set of kinetic parameters, which are otherwise unobtainable. This is accomplished by proposing a reaction network, a plausible mechanism, and optimizing the kinetic parameters based on the reactor-model-generated peformance data to fit experimental output concentrations of all species for the entire set of experiments. A complex reaction network for the key reactions in the system is developed based on the reaction scheme in Part I. Fitting of trickle-bed reactor data to this model is attempted to yield an insight into the actual kinetics. The results show promise of obtaining an overall network kinetic model, even with the limited data available.