Mechanistic Study on the Selective Oxidation of Acrolein to Acrylic Acid concerning the Role of Water

The activity of Mo/V/W mixed oxide catalyst in the gas phase oxidation of acrolein to acrylic acid is tremendously influenced by addition of fed water. This effect of water is investigated and connected to the catalytic mechanism by several stationary kinetic measurements and transient response methods, such as temperature‐programmed reduction, oxidation and desorption experiments, special concentration‐programmed methods as well as H₂¹⁸O‐SSITKA and D₂O‐SSITKA experiments. Furthermore, kinetic modeling, based on results of H₂¹⁸O‐SSITKA experiments in a wide temperature and feed water content range gives access to kinetic parameters of single reaction steps in the catalytic mechanism. The developed mechanism is not only able to describe conversion and selectivities, inclusively the effect of water, but also describes the ¹⁸O‐degree of labeling of all reaction components quantitatively.