The partial oxidation of methane to formaldehyde was carried out in a novel gas reactor-seperator. In this system the desired product, that is formaldehyde, is protected from further oxidation via trapping in an adsorption unit placed in the recycle loop. The trap unit is placed just after the exit of the reactor and distilled water is used as the trapping material. The catalyst used was 1.3% V 2 O 5 /SiO 2 . The system could perform two different modes of operation, with or without recycle and product seperation. During thesingle-pass operation (without recycle and product seperation) the formaldehyde yield was 2% while during recycle operation it reached values up to 50%. This yield value is the highest ever reported for the proccess of methane conversion to formaldehyde.
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