Kinetics of hydrogenation of methyl benzoate to benzaldehyde at low molar ratio of H₂ to ester

The effects of temeperature and molar ratio of H₂ to methyl benzoate(MB) on hydrogenation of methyl benzoate were investigated in a fixed-bed reactor using 25% ZnO/MnO/γ-Al₂O₃ modified by 4% Li 3% Cr as catalyst and eliminating the internal and external diffusion influence and the intrinsic kinetics model for hydrogenation of MB to benzaldehyde at low molar ratio of H₂ to ester was built up. The minimum residual sum of squares of the model calculated and experimental values of MB conversion and benzaldehyde selectivity was used as the objective function. The parameters were obtained by using nonlinear least-squares method, of the Metlab software and the significance testing of the model was carried out. The results showed that the model for hydrogenation of methyl benzoate was reasonable and could describle hydrogenation of methyl benzoate well.