Experimental and computational investigation of the electrocatalytic hydrogenation of phenol in an electrochemical cell

The electrocatalytic hydrogenation (ECH) of phenol was carried out in aqueous media with a commercial Pd/Al2O3 (5% w/w) catalyst. A porous matrix of reticulated vitreous carbon (RVC) was used to study the porosity-stirring speed coupling (PSSC) effect on the phenol hydrogenation to form cyclohexanone and cyclohexanol. In accordance with the PSSC, the electrode can act as a fluidized bed electrode or as an agglomerated electrode. Fluidized bed electrodes develop for low porosity matrices (10-30 ppi, ppi = pores per inch) at high stirring speeds (>600 rpm), while agglomerated electrodes are obtained for high porosity matrices (60-100 ppi) with moderate stirring speeds under cathodic polarization. The distribution of the volume fraction of the particles and the agglomeration of the particles have been simulated by computational fluid dynamic (CFD) methods with FLUENT software. For the agglomerated electrode, the numerical simulations demonstrate the beneficial contribution of the cathodic polarization to the agglomeration process. However, at 650 rpm, for the fluidized bed electrode, the volume fraction of the particles in the RVC does not account for the distinction in the ECH efficiency between the 30 ppi matrix and the 100 ppi matrix. For a given amount of Pd/Al2O3 catalyst, it is observed that the ECH rates depend on the PSSC and increase in the following order: 100/650 < 30/650 < 100/200.