Elementary Kinetic Modelling in Catalytic Reaction Engineering

J W Thybaut holds a PhD in chemical engineering (2002) and is currently associate professor in catalytic reaction engineering. His research activities are centered around fundamental kinetic modeling of complex reactions and the exploitation of these models aiming at rational catalyst design as well as at industrial process enhancement. Jeroen Lauwaert is a tenure track assistant professor at the Industrial Catalysis and Adsorption Technology (INCAT) research group of Ghent University, Belgium. His main research interests are related to process intensification through engineering thermodynamics and elementary kinetics aiming at applications ranging from biomass valorization to fine chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Lignin valorization, aldol reactions, esterifications, hydrodeoxygenations and Suzuki cross-coupling reactions, are just a few of the processes he has been working on. His activities comprise a broad spectrum of fields, including heterogeneous catalyst synthesis and characterization, systematically assessing catalytic performances in terms of activity as well as stability, kinetic modelling, phase equilibria measurements, thermodynamic modelling, and separation design. Jeroen Poissonnier has hands-on experience with kinetic modelling for over ten years now, from which several as teaching assistant and co-lecturer in the Kinetic Modelling and Simulation course at the Laboratory for Chemical Technology (LCT) of Ghent University, Belgium. His research is situated in the field of catalytic reaction engineering with a particular focus on novel sustainable process development by means of a systematic experimental assessment coupled with fundamental kinetic modelling, industrial reactor simulations and development of commercial scale process concepts. He is also providing consultancy to major industrial partners and already (co-)tutored in multiple intensive trainings in this field. Pieter Janssens has obtained a master’s degree in chemical engineering technology (KU Leuven, Belgium) and Chemistry (Ghent University, Belgium), after which he obtained a PhD in Chemistry (Ghent University) in the field of asymmetric catalysis. He started his career in industry in 2014 as a research engineer at Unilin after which he moved to EcoSynth as a project leader. During this time, he obtained a master’s degree in chemical engineering (Ghent University) and returned in 2020 to academia to investigate the kinetic and process modelling of sustainable light olefin production processes. Alexandra Bouriakova is a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory for Chemical Technology, Ghent University, Belgium. Her research disciplines include Heterogeneous catalysis, Reacting systems, Chemical kinetics, and thermodynamics, as well as modelling, simulation, and optimisation. Sébastien Siradze is currently working as a PhD student at the Laboratory for Chemical Technology at Ghent University, Belgium and is investigating ethylene hydroformylation aiming at heterogeneous catalyst development. He studied Chemical Engineering at Ghent University and obtained his degree in 2019. He did his master thesis on the automated feature extraction of Open Access Data and worked on the development of a tool for the automatic analysis of reaction kinetics data as a part of this work.

Part I: Modelling and Simulation Methodologies
1. Chemical reactions and reactors
2. Acquisition of data containing the relevant information for model construction
3. Data treatment and analysis
4. Rate equation derivation
5. Complex reaction networks
6. Rate and equilibrium coefficient determination
7. Model exploitation

Section II: Applied Case Studies
8. Gas phase heterogeneously catalysed reaction: butanediol dehydration
9. Liquid phase reaction: (trans)esterification reactions
10. Three-phase reaction: hydrogenation/hydrotreatment
11. Adsorption effects: from Langmuir adsorption in the Henry regime over saturation effects in solid materials to swelling phenomena in resins
12. Combined homogeneous/heterogeneous reactions: oxidative coupling of methane
13. Relevant reactor scales
14. Relevant phenomena: internal transport limitations, interphase transport limitations