An Experimental Study of Catalysts and Carrier Gas Transport Through Membranes for Improved Yield of Ester Product

Abstract

In this work, an initial study of heterogeneous catalyst activity and carrier gas transport through inorganic ceramic membrane for improved yield of ester product was carried out. Dowex 50W8x, Amberlyst 36, Amberlyst 15 and Amberlyst 16 cation-exchange resins were used as heterogeneous catalysts. The SEM/EDXA (The Zeiss EVO LS10) of the resin catalyst was investigated in order to determine the surface morphology. The EDXA of the catalysts showed the presence of sulphur which confirms the sulfonic acid group in the structure of the polymeric compound. FTIR (Nicolet iS10) was used for the structural analysis of the resins. The permeation properties of inorganic ceramic membrane with the carrier gases were also analysed between the gauge pressures of 0.01–1.00 bar at the temperature of 60 °C (333 K). The carrier gas permeance showed a linear dependence on the inverse square root of the gas molecular weight indicating Knudsen mechanism of transport.