The catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) of phenol has been studied in a trickle bed reactor
using active carbon prepared from date stones as catalyst by ferric and zinc chloride activation (FAC and ZAC). The activated carbons were characterized by measuring their surface area and adsorption capacity besides conventional properties, and then checked for CWAO using a trickle bed reactor operating at different conditions (i.e. pH, gas flow rate, LHSV, temperature and oxygen partial pressure). The results showed that the active carbon (FAC and ZAC), without any active metal supported, gives the highest phenol conversion. The reaction network proposed accounts for all detected intermediate products of phenol oxidation that composed by several consecutive and parallel reactions. The parameters of the model estimated using experimental data obtained from a continuous trickle bed reactor at different temperatures (120-160 C) and oxygen partial pressures (8-12 bar). Simple power law as well as Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) expressions accounting for the adsorption effects were checked in the modeling of the reaction network. A non-linear multi-parameter estimation approach was used to simultaneously evaluate the high number of model parameters. Approach by simple power law only succeeds in fitting phenol disappearance. Instead, when L-H expressions are incorporated for the intermediate reaction steps, the model accurately describes all the experimental concentration profiles, giving mean deviations below 10%.
