Retrofit reactor including gas/liquid ejector and monolith catalyst

In a process for the catalytic reaction of compounds wherein a liquid compound is contacted with a gaseous reactant in the presence of a catalytic component, the improvement which comprises effecting the reaction in a catalytic retrofit for a slurry reactor wherein:

• (a) circulating a feed mixture of gaseous reactant and liquid compound to a liquid motive gas ejector under conditions for mixing said gaseous reactant and said liquid compound;
• (b) removing the mixture of liquid compound and reactant gas from said liquid motive gas ejector and charging said mixture to the inlet of a monolith catalytic reactor;
• (c) effecting reaction between said liquid compound and said gaseous reactant and thereby forming a reaction product containing unreacted liquid compound, unreacted gaseous reactant and final product;
• (d) removing the reaction product from the exit of the monolith catalytic reactor and introducing to a tank;
• (e) removing reaction product and additional liquid compound from said tank;
• (f) removing gas from said tank;
• (g) circulating the reaction product which had been discharged to the tank in step (d) to the liquid motive gas ejector and combining it with gas from the headspace of said tank per step (f), and, then through the monolith catalytic reactor until the desired conversion is effected, and then,
• (h) removing final product from the process when the reaction has reached desired conversion.