Amorphous Ni Alloy Hydrogenation Catalyst and Magnetically Stabilized Bed Reaction Technology

A new hydrogenation technology is introduced. This hydrogenation technology includes two new concepts: amorphous Ni alloy and magnetically stabilized bed. Amorphous metal alloys are new kinds of catalytic materials with short-range orderly but long-range disorderly structure. The disadvantages of the amorphous Ni alloy materials in terms of small specific surface area and low thermal stability have been solved to develop these materials into practical catalyst to substitute for the Raney Ni catalyst. The magnetically stabilized bed reactor, a fluidized bed of magnetically stabilized particles by applying a spatially uniform and time-invariant magnetic field oriented axially relative to the fluidizing fluid flow, has many advantages such as the low pressure drop and the high mass transfer efficiency. The cold model tests had revealed that the magnetically stabilized bed reactor displayed three different forms, i.e., the scattered particulates mode, the chain mode and the magnetic condensation mode. The chain mode was conductive to good contact between solid and liquid to promote the catalytic reaction. Two commercial units of the magnetically stabilized bed reactor were set up, with the capacity of 200 and 250 kt/a, respectively. Integration of the amorphous Ni alloy catalyst and the magnetically stabilized bed reactor was developed in the process for purification of caprolactam at RIPP, SINOPEC. The new reaction process has enhanced the hydrogenation reaction to reduce the reaction volume to 1/8 and 1/3 of those of kettle-type reactor and the fixed-bed reactor of the same throughput, respectively.