Patent ID: 7731916

Claim:
A method of charging catalyst tubes, comprising: charging a plurality of catalyst tubes with shaped bodies so that each catalyst tube includes at least two sections having different formulations of shaped bodies and the sections are provided uniformly among the plurality of catalyst tubes; wherein: at least two of the sections having different formulations of shaped bodies charged into the plurality of catalyst tubes are obtained by filling a uniform amount of a corresponding formulation of shaped bodies into each of a plurality of packets, and emptying into each respective one section of the plurality of catalyst tubes the same number of packets; a formulation of shaped bodies consists of: a mixture of two or more shaped catalyst body types that differ in one of more of the following ways: geometry, chemical make-up of active composition, physical nature of active composition and proportion by weight of active composition; or a mixture of shaped catalyst bodies and shaped diluent bodies; and the amount and formulation within each packet is determined according to weight or number of pieces of the different shaped catalyst body types; the number of packets to be emptied into each respective one section of each of the plurality of catalyst tubes is an integer from 1 to 10; and the plurality of catalyst tubes comprises a bundle of at least 1,000 catalyst tubes having an internal diameter of from 10 to 50 mm.