Investigating the Irreversible Poisoning of Methanol Synthesis Catalysts – A Setup Construction Guide

When utilizing industrial exhaust gases for methanol synthesis, catalyst poisoning is an important issue. Long-term in-situ poisoning under industrially relevant conditions with sulfur-containing molecules co-fed into the feed gas flow and supplemented by extensive post-mortem characterization of the catalyst bed is an efficient way to deepen the understanding of the poisoning mechanism and the different poisoning strengths of H₂S, thiophene, and COS reported in literature. Unfortunately, such studies are rare due to the corrosive effects of sulfur compounds on typical lab-scale flow setups. Therefore, this communication provides a detailed description of a setup built for poisoning studies using sulfur-containing molecules under industrially relevant methanol synthesis conditions.