Patent ID: 9566570
Date: 2017-02-14
CPC Classifications: B01J,C10G

Claim:
1. A process for facilitating the unloading of a fixed bed of catalyst particles from a reactor tube, the catalyst particles comprising: at least 40 weight % of a metal oxide chosen from the group of titania, silica, alumina, zirconia, ceria, gallia and mixtures thereof, and at least 2 weight % of the element cobalt, calculated on the total weight of the catalyst particles; the process comprising the steps of: (i) feeding a gas comprising 10 to 30 (vol/vol) percent of oxygen, to the reactor tube with a gas hourly space velocity for oxygen of 0.5 to 50 Nl/l/hr; and (ii) removing the catalyst particles from the reactor tube; wherein in the fixed bed of catalyst particles to which the oxygen comprising gas is fed in step (i) at most 10 mole % of the element cobalt is present in Co3O4 and/or CoO, calculated on the total amount of moles of cobalt in the catalyst particles.