Engineering catalysis

Over 90% of the overall industrial chemical production uses catalyst in its production processes, which makes it relevant and most important to understand the catalysis from an engineering point of view. Heterogeneous catalysis is one of the highly interdisciplinary research areas – demanding contribution from chemist, surface scientist, physicist, material scientist and chemical engineers. This book focuses on the engineering aspects of the heterogeneous catalysis.

“Engineering Catalysis” has been written by Prof. Dr. Dmitry Yu. Murzin, who has experience as a researcher, chemical engineer, manager and educator. Since 2000, he holds the chair of chemical technology at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland. This book aims at graduates, focusing on engineering of heterogeneous catalysts and reactions. This book successfully provides with a background in fundamentals of catalysis, catalyst characterization and preparation, reaction kinetics, mass transfer, catalytic reactors, and the employment of catalysts in chemical industry.

Chapter 1 sets ‘The Basics’ for readers to understand the engineering of catalysts. It clarifies the fundamental concepts related to catalytic processes such as length scale involved, catalytic trinity and catalyst composition with the help of examples and self-explanatory images. It has also covered the reactivity of solids by explaining the adsorption processes, surface crystallography and mechanisms of catalytic reactions. ‘Catalysis in industry’ has been presented with a very informative table, summarizing industrial chemical processes with catalyst used and relevant process conditions, which are believed to be very handy for readers.

Chapter 2, ‘Engineering Catalyst’ covers the catalyst characterization and preparation methods. First half of this chapter focuses on most widely used methods to characterize the physical properties (such as surface area, pore size, particle strength, and surface structure), chemical structure (location and type of active sites, type of adsorbed species) and supported catalyst. The explanation is written for the engineers, i.e., covering the basics, applications and limitations of the characterization techniques rather than giving the detailed physics. It also nicely explains the interpretation part of the characterization methods. Second half of this chapter deals with catalyst preparation, which varies greatly on industrial and laboratory scale. Preparation methods for bulk and supported catalyst have been given together with information on commonly used catalyst supports and catalyst forming operations.

‘Engineering of Reactions’ have been covered in Chapter 3. This includes topics on thermodynamics, kinetics, mass transfer effects, catalytic reactors, and kinetic aspects of selectivity. In kinetics; complex reaction kinetics, reaction mechanisms, and non-ideal surfaces are explained. Diffusional effects, internal and external mass transfer issues are discussed under sub-topic; Mass transfer. Laboratory and industrial scale catalytic reactors are also explained together with reactor modeling. Important and very relevant to engineering – catalyst handling in plant is also dealt with in this chapter. Also, comparison of various catalytic reactors is tabulated for Fischer Tropsh process.

Chapter 4 focuses on the technology part of the process industry, which is titled ‘Engineering Technology’. It contains an Introductory part on general aspects of safety in process design, conceptual process design and reactor selection. Four very important chemical processes; Fluid catalytic cracking, Steam reforming, Ammonia synthesis, and Phthalic anhydride synthesis are explained with respect to their reactions and mechanism, kinetics, process variables, catalyst and technology employed, and reactor and process design.

This book bridges a gap to familiarize chemical engineer to the most important catalysis issues by covering all relevant basics. What is special about this book is, the author has shared his extensive experience and learning in the form of blue box notes throughout this book. However, the book has some typing errors.

This will be a valuable guide for chemist, process engineers, graduates as well as professionals coming from an academic background, to learn about the catalysis from an engineering view point. This book will be of value especially to those who are starting in the field of catalysis.