For catalytic practitioners who are concerned with laboratory studies of reaction mechanisins, as often as not catalyst deactivation isĀ· treated as a nuisance to be ignored or factored out of the experimental results. HowĀ ever, the engineer concerned with the design and operaĀ tion of real catalysts and processes cannot afford this luxury: for him deactivation and the need for regeneraĀ tion are inevitable facts of life which need to be treated as quantified design parameters. The first chapter in this volume by Prof. J. B. Butt deals with catalyst deactivation and regeneration as processes in their own right, and shows how they are to be approached from kinetic and design points of view. Catalytic olefin polymerization spans a very wide field in catalytic process chemistry and technology. Processes of this sort range from the generation of high volume products such as polyethylene and polypropylene, through more specialized commercial products, to conĀ versions that still remain laboratory curiosities. The reaction chemistry is, in detail, often very complex. However, because of the insight provided by organoĀ metallic reaction chemistry, many of the polymerization mechanisms are reasonably well understood, and the way in which product stereospecificity may be obtained is also understood in considerable detail. This highly complex subject is reviewed in detail in the second chapter of this volume by Prof. I. Pasquon and Dr. G. Giannini.
Editors and Affiliations
CSIRO Division of Materials Science, Catalysis and Surface Science Laboratory, University of Melbourne, Australia
John R. Anderson
Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, USA