Continuous chemical reaction chromatography. Progress report, January 1989--January 1992

The past three years have been devoted to investigating simulated countercurrent chomatographic moving bed separators (SCMCS) and simulated countercurrent moving bed reactors (SCMCR). These are novel separators and reactors used for separation, or for carrying out a chemical reaction and separation continuously and simultaneously in fixed bed. In the SCMCR and the SCMCS the process aspects of a countercurrent moving bed, in which a stream of solids flows countercurrent to an inert fluid and past stationary reactant inlet, is simulated by successively switching feed and product take-off streams through a series of inlets located at fixed intervals along a fixed bed or between a series of packed columns. The flow of solids past a fixed feed point, characteristic of countercurrent moving beds, is replaced by motion of the feed past a fixed packed bed. Feed enters a particular column for a fixed length of time, and then is switched to the next column. Product streams are also advanced simultaneously. When the feed point has progressed to the end it is returned to the starting position and the process repeated. The shifting of the feed and the product positions in the direction of fluid flow thus simulates the movement of solidsmore » in the opposite direction. The requisite motion between the feed and the bed, which is continuous for true countercurrency, is replaced by periodic, discrete steps in simulated countercurrency. The continuous, steady state operation characteristic of true countercurrency is replaced by periodic transients at each switch of the feed.« less