High-throughput parallel reactor system for propylene oxidation catalyst investigation

A high-throughput reactor system was designed for catalyst testing, which includes two important sections: the gas flow splitters and the parallel reactor. Each gas flow splitter could split one gas stream to 64 streams (8 x 8). The current system has two gas splitters that could feed two kinds of gases (from mass flow controllers to a 64-channel (8 x 8) parallel fixed-bed reactor. The reactor is composed of tube connectors, a reactor tube array, a heating block, a product collector, and a temperature controller. The reactor system could test 64 catalysts simultaneously and give results, which are comparable with a regular single-channel microreactor. For the purpose of verifying the validity of the reactor system, propylene oxidation to prepare acrolein was used as the probing reaction. In order to analyze the reaction products, a high-throughput colorimetric diffusion-reflection imaging method was developed for the analysis of acrolein. By comparing the results from colorimetric diffusion-reflection imaging analysis with that from the traditional gas chromatography spectrometer with thermal conductivity detectors, a colorimetric diffusion-reflection imaging method was confirmed to be reliable and accurate in acrolein analysis.