Investigation of hydrogenation and mass transfer performance in micropacked beds with highly active monolithic catalysts

A method of slurry circulation for coating supports on nickel foams with small pore size is proposed to prepare monolithic catalysts used in micropacked beds (MPBs). Rather than the method applied to a single support material, this method is verified to be universal and applicable for various supports in this work. The coatings and active component Pd loaded on the coatings are demonstrated to be uniform. The coating weight can be predicted by an empirical correlation, revealing a law of coating weight. The monolithic catalysts exhibit high activity, long-term stability, and mechanical stability in the hydrogenation of α-methylstyrene. Moreover, the overall external mass transfer coefficient (kOV) of catalysts is measured, showing that kOV is affected by the properties of coatings. The catalysts prepared by slurry circulation method hopefully provide high activity and stability for various catalytic reactions in MPBs.