ROMEO – Reactor Optimization by Membrane Enhanced Operation
- 01 Jan 1970
ROMEO’s “two-in-one” reactors combine optimized membrane modules and the immobilization of highly active and selective homogeneous catalysts to carry out chemical synthesis and downstream processing in a single step. As demonstration cases two important reactions were investigated from nano- to macro-scale: hydroformylation (conversion of olefins and syngas to aldehydes) and water-gas shift reaction (use of CO-containing syngas derived from biomass to generate hydrogen).
With this innovative approach ROMEO will:
- improve selectivity and productivity of industrial reactions, including raw material savings and catalyst recycling
- reduce energy consumption by up to 80% in industrial catalytic gas-phase reactions
- reduce related emissions by up to 90%
The ROMEO project focused on the combination of a homogeneously catalysed reaction step with a membrane separation step in one reactor. To do so, homogeneous catalysts were supported on membranes. Embedding homogeneous catalysts in thin films of non-volatile ionic liquids (SILP technology) maintained their catalytic abilities as in the homogeneous phase while the anchoring directly on or even in the membrane ensures a most efficient separation.
