Hydrogenation is a very widely used chemical process. It is used in many different products across a variety of industries; petrochemical, pharmaceutical and food industries amongst others. The normal process conditions involve elevated pressure and temperature in the presence of a precious metal catalyst. Traditionally it has been carried out in a large batch STRs (stirred tank reactors); the inefficient mixing in these leads to increased process times and higher levels of catalyst loading. The need for elevated temperature and pressure combined with the explosive nature of hydrogen makes this a dangerous process which needs to be made as safe as possible.

NiTech's baffled mixing technology creates the opportunity to use a smaller volume reactor vessel in a semi-continuous/continuous mode. Reducing the reactor volume makes the process intrinsically safer and considerably cheaper in terms of both CAPEX and OPEX. In addition, reductions stock inventories for both reactants and products are possible.

An example of a hydrogenation through our technology is the catalytic reduction of an aromatic nitroso compound to an amine in a continuous process.

ArNO + 2H₂  ArNH₂ + H₂O

The reactor was operated in a semi-continuous fashion. Each elution consisted of removing product to a low level indicator then introducing further reactants. The table below shows the results from this project. The OBR was very consistent, always producing product with a purity of greater than 99.9%.

The table below highlights some of the results of the reduction of the aromatic nitroso.

The other main features of the technology are the safety and environmental benefits it brings:

SAFETY

Continuous processing is intrinsically safer than batch processing;

• smaller inventories of reactants
• smaller reactor volumes
• small vessel at temperature and/or temperature

ENVIRONMENTAL

• Lower volumes of solvents being used
• Lower disposal volumes and costs