Effect of Polymer Size on Heterogeneous Catalytic Polystyrene Hydrogenation

The effect of polymer coil size on the rate of polystyrene (PS) hydrogenation was studied in a slurry reactor with mixtures of decahydronaphthalene (DHN) and carbon dioxide (CO2) as the solvent for the polymer. The PS coil size was changed by varying the polymer molecular weight from 9300 g/mol to 357 000 g/mol and by varying the CO2 concentration. Using a 5% Pd/5% Ru/SiO2 catalyst, the rate of aromatic ring hydrogenation at 150 °C was found to be strongly dependent on the size of a polymer coil relative to the average pore diameter of the catalyst. Significant pore diffusion limitations, as indicated by values of the Weisz modulus, were observed with increasing polymer molecular weight. Increasing the concentration of CO2 resulted in increased reaction rates, with an improvement of nearly 2 orders of magnitude at the highest PS molecular weight.