(122e) Understanding Catalyst Failure Mechanisms in Plant Operation
AIChE Annual Meeting
2022
2022 Annual Meeting
Fuels and Petrochemicals Division
Advances in Petroleum Production and Refining
Monday, November 14, 2022 - 1:28pm to 1:43pm
This study will show application of microscopy, spectroscopy and development of accelerating aging methodologies on different length scales to understand catalyst failure modes. Herein, challenges of plant catalyst examination will be discussed using as an example CuZnO catalyst. The spent catalyst may not be directly compared with the fresh catalyst because of structure modifications due to reduction and oxidation, thermal stress and mechanical unloading. However, careful interpretation of the results from microscopy analysis enables identification characteristic fingerprints of the failure mechanisms. Origins of different degradation modes for two CuZnO catalysts with very similar composition will be explained (Figure). This work will demonstrate the great potential of post-mortem catalyst structure analysis in understanding the root cause of failure.