Patent ID: 7500999

Claim:
A catalytic reactor to catalytically react a feed stream and thereby produce a product stream, said catalytic reactor comprising: a housing; at least one reaction zone; the at least one reaction zone located within the housing and having a set of separate reaction tubes to provide parallel flow paths for subsidiary feed streams composed of the feed stream, the reaction tubes containing a catalyst to promote a chemical reaction within the subsidiary feed streams thereby, to produce the product stream from subsidiary product streams formed within the reaction tubes; the set of separate reaction tubes being of helical configuration and positioned, at least substantially, in the coaxial arrangement to form a coil-like structure; at least one reaction feed inlet in communication with the at least one reaction zone to introduce the feed stream into the at least one reaction zone and configured so that the feed stream flows within the set of separate reaction tubes as the subsidiary feed streams; and at least one product outlet in communication with the at least one reaction zone and configured so as to receive the subsidiary product streams and thereby to discharge the product stream.