Bergwerksverband Gmbh

Dietrich George

Kurt Handrick

Josef Degel

Joachim Karweil

Anton Benning

Jurgen Schlegel

The reactor has a reactor chamber bounded by a peripheral wall, and the reactor chamber is subdivided by an upright partition wall into an inlet chamber and an outlet chamber. The partition wall extends transversely of the chamber and has free ends each of which is spaced from a juxtaposed portion of the peripheral wall by a distance equal to between substantially 10-30% of the cross-sectional dimension of the reactor chamber in a plane connecting these juxtaposed wall portions. The partition wall is laterally offset by between substantially 10 - 30% of the diameter of the chamber in the direction of offset so that the inlet chamber is larger than the outlet chamber. An inlet communicates with the inlet chamber to admit into the same carbon particles which require reactivation and has an opening having a cross-sectional area equal to between substantially 5 - 25% of the surface area of a bottom wall bounding said reactor chamber, and an outlet which communicates with the outlet chamber to remove activated carbon particles from the same, the particles from the inlet chamber being composed to pass through the gap between the free ends of the partition wall and the circumferential wall to reach the outlet chamber.

Reactor for the continuous reactivation of activated carbon particles

Processes for the continuous production of aromatic carboxylic acids by reaction of nitric acid with an aromatic compound having an oxidizable alkyl or alkoxyalkyl substitutent which comprise mixing the aromatic compound in the form of small droplets with a large volume of dilute nitric acid having a concentration between 2 and 14% by weight of nitric acid that is maintained at a superatmospheric pressure between 15 and 80 atmospheres and at a temperature between 160.degree. and 230.degree.C, which processes comprise continuously passing a reaction mixture consisting of the aromatic compound and the dilute nitric acid through a series of at least three consecutively arranged vertical reactor column in each of which the ratio of the weight of the reaction mixture containing the dilute nitric acid to the weight of the aromatic compound is continuously maintained at at least 50:1, the nitric acid concentration in each of the reactor column being continuously maintained at an originally preselected concentration by the addition of amounts of more-concentrated nitric acid while aliquot portions of the aromatic compound based upon the number of vertical reactor columns in the series are continuously introduced into each of the reactor columns, the reaction zones each being maintained at an optimal oxidation temperature between 160 and 230.degree.C for the aromatic compound that is being oxidized, and continuously passing the reaction mixture into a final reactor column that is maintained at a higher temperature than the preceding series of reactor columns, and continuously discharging the reaction mixture containing between 10 and 20% by weight of the aromatic carboxylic acid thus produced from the final reactor column.

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Essen, Germany

Dietrich George