Development of high performance catalysts for the production of vinyl acetate monomer

Two types of highly active and selective vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) catalysts have been developed in our lab via traditional lab preparation and high-pressure reactor performance test methods. Experimental results are presented here. Degussa is now engaged in high-throughput (HT) VAM catalyst powder preparation and HT (50 parallel reactor) testing to accelerate the development of new higher performing commercial catalysts. Our first results on HT are presented here. Though HT systems in both catalyst preparation and testing have existed for over a decade, HT heterogeneous catalyst preparation methods have been very slow to develop. The HT preparation system described here provides a versatile method of preparing commercially relevant catalysts as required by Degusssa. The HT reactor test system described here uses plant operating conditions and provides reliable STY and selectivity data on par with that obtained from conventional lab VAM test systems. Both the HT preparation and HT test systems combined allow for significant increases in the commercialization rate of new catalysts.