The platinum catalyst applied in earlier sulfuric acid production via the contact process suffered from drawbacks such as_________________?
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Answer: D. All A, B. and C.
Explanation
Platinum is an extremely expensive precious metal, making initial catalyst loading costs prohibitively high. Platinum catalyst gauzes or pellets are physically fragile and can degrade under harsh industrial reactor conditions. Trace impurities in sulfur dioxide gas easily poison platinum active sites, permanently destroying its catalytic activity. Early contact process plants suffered frequent operational shutdowns due to platinum catalyst poisoning by arsenic. Modern sulfuric acid plants replaced platinum with cheaper, more robust vanadium pentoxide catalysts. Catalyst poisoning occurs when foreign chemical species bind irreversibly to active catalytic reaction sites.
Chemical plant operators install rigorous gas purification and scrubbing trains to protect sensitive reactor catalysts. Advances in industrial catalyst design have dramatically reduced operating costs and improved chemical plant reliability. Understanding catalyst longevity is essential for maintaining continuous chemical production without expensive catalyst replacements. Selecting only high cost ignores the equally critical engineering problems of fragility and chemical poisoning vulnerability. Focusing exclusively on the fragile nature overlooks the severe economic and catalytic poisoning drawbacks of platinum. Restricting the answer just to easy poisoning ignores the heavy financial burden of precious metal catalyst costs.
- Subject
- Engineering
- Category
- Chemical Engineering
- Topic
- —
- Difficulty
- medium
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