An identification approach to a reaction network for an ABE catalytic upgrade

This contribution presents a kinetic study for the identification of the complex reaction mechanism occurring during the ABE upgrading, and the development of a kinetic model. Employing graph theory analysis, a directed bipartite graph is constructed to reduce the complexity of the reaction network, and the reaction rate constants and reaction orders are calculated using the initial rate method, followed by the calculation of the activation energy and frequency factor for an Arrhenius-type law. Subsequently, using general mass balancing a proposed mathematical model is produced to determine the apparent reaction rates, which are successfully in line with the experimental results.