Kinetic Modeling of Hydrodenitrogenation of Pyridine

This study is aimed at developing a kinetic model for the hydrodenitrogenation (HDN) of pyridine. The developed model deals with the selectivity of piperidine, one of the products obtained from the HDN of pyridine and with the conversion of pyridine to piperidine. Kinetic parameters were estimated from the results of the experimental data obtained from literature sources where the reactions were carried out in a trickle-bed reactor in the liquid phase over Mo2C, NbMo2C, and MoS2/SiO2 catalysts at temperatures of 480 to 590 K. POLYMATH 5.0 software was used to solve the proposed first-order model. It was shown that during the course of the HDN reaction of pyridine the conversion increases exponentially with temperature while selectivity of piperidine with respect to pyridine decreases with temperature. The changes in activation energies evaluated for the catalysts were 80.30 kJ/mol, 55.10 kJ/mol, and 40.85 kJ/mol for Mo2C, NbMo2C, and MoS2/SiO2, respectively.