The exothermicity of oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) renders a cooled packed‐bed reactor impractical or impossible. Recently, we proposed an adiabatic autothermal reactor as a solution to this problem and reported the first results for stable autothermal operation (AO) with feed at ambient temperature. AO on the ignited branch is possible only in the region of steady‐state multiplicity. High per‐pass conversion and productivity requirements demand a stable ignited branch at the lowest possible feed temperature and high flow rate. To achieve OCM scale‐up, many conditions must be satisfied simultaneously. Using a kinetic model for La₂O₃/CaO catalyst, we examine the impact of space time, feed methane to oxygen ratio, feed temperature, particle size, inter‐phase heat and mass transfer gradients, pore‐diffusion, bed scale heat/mass dispersion on the region of AO for large scale adiabatic packed‐bed reactors. We show that while it is possible to achieve CH₄ conversion of about 20% and C₂ selectivity of about 80% in scaled‐up reactors, these values are sensitive to the design and operating parameters.

中文翻译：

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La2O3 / CaO催化剂的甲烷氧化偶联自热运行的放大分析

甲烷氧化偶联（OCM）的放热性使冷却的填充床反应器不切实际或不可能实现。最近，我们提出了一种绝热自热反应器作为该问题的解决方案，并报道了在室温下进料稳定自动热操作（AO）的初步结果。被点燃的分支上的AO仅在稳态复数区域内才可能。高每次转换和生产率的要求要求在尽可能低的进料温度和高流速下要有稳定的点火分支。要实现OCM放大，必须同时满足许多条件。使用La ₂ O ₃ / CaO的动力学模型催化剂，我们研究了时空，进料甲烷与氧气的比例，进料温度，粒度，相间传热和传质梯度，孔扩散，床规模热/质量分散对AO绝热区域的影响填充床反应器 我们表明，虽然在规模扩大的反应堆中可以实现约20％的CH ₄转化率和约80％的C ₂选择性，但这些值对设计和操作参数很敏感。