Mechanistic Modelling of the Catalytic Pyrolysis of Methylcyclohexane

A detailed chemical kinetic mechanism describing the thermal and catalytic cracking of methylcyclohexane over a 12CaO.7Al2O3 catalyst is presented. The model is based on balanced equations for both molecular and radical species describing an experimental fixed-bed reactor system. The mechanistic model is based on overall first-order decomposition kinetics, which satisfactorily describes experimental data. The simulated product distributions show a reasonably good agreement with the experimental results and confirm the hypothesis that the catalyst does not affect the pyrolysis mechanism and only increases the rate of the initiation steps