Preparation and characteristics of wavy form microchannel reactors coated with H-ZSM-5 for the endothermic decomposition reaction of methylcyclohexane

Abstract

Endothermic decomposition reaction of methylcyclohexane (MCH) was conducted to solve problems of hypersonic flight as cooling technology. A wavy form microchannel reactor (WMCR) coated with H-ZSM-5 was used to improve this reaction. WMCR coated with H-ZSM-5 was simply prepared by using binder coating method. Field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis were used to examine the surface of WMCR coated with H-ZSM-5. Endothermic decomposition reaction of MCH was carried out in a flow reactor under supercritical conditions (823 K and 50 bar) during 30 min. The liquid products produced by catalytic reaction were analyzed by gas chromatograph-mass selective detector (GC-MSD) at 10, 20 and 30 min, respectively. The results show that an increase in H-ZSM-5 coating amount on WMCR surface for catalytic reaction had a trade-off relationship; the increase of catalysts on WMCR had a positive effect on overall improvement of heat sink (from 416.59 kJ/mol to 611.06 kJ/mol) but simultaneously negative effect for catalytic life time because of increase in catalytic deactivation (from 5.9% to 30%).