Electromagnetic and Heat-Transfer Simulation of the Catalytic Dehydrogenation of Ethylbenzene under Microwave Irradiation

Electromagnetic and heat-transfer simulations were used to study the effects of microwave-generated nonuniform temperature distributions in a catalyst bed on the rate enhancement of a fixed-bed flow reaction. We used the dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene over a magnetite catalyst as a model reaction. During the microwave reaction, a temperature gradient was generated in the catalyst bed; the highest temperature occurred at the core of the catalyst bed, and it parabolically decreased toward the surface. Using these simulation results and Arrhenius parameters, the reaction rates were estimated by considering the nonuniform temperature distribution. The measured reaction rate was 36% larger than the simulated value, indicating that the rate enhancement under microwaves can not only be attributed to the nonuniform temperature distribution in the catalyst bed. This could be due to nonequilibrium local heating (the so-called hot spot) in the very small region around the catalyst particle.