Ethylbenzene (EB) is currently produced via acid catalyzed benzene alkylation with ethene, which is a product of highly endothermic and energy intensive processes. The new reaction, which uses ethane for benzene alkylation, instead of ethene, would eliminate the ethene production step, thus, leading to the commercial and environmental benefits in the EB manufacturing. Benzene alkylation with ethane into EB can be achieved using bifunctional zeolite catalysts, which combine ethane dehydrogenation into ethene over metal sites with benzene alkylation by ethene over Brønsted acid sites. The benzene alkylation with ethane into EB over Pt-containing (1 wt.%) ZSM-5 bifunctional catalyst was investigated at six different temperatures (290, 330, 370, 410, 450 and 490oC). The optimum reaction temperature as well as the effect of temperature on the catalyst performance and reaction pathways were established. Excellent catalyst performance was obtained at 370oC, at which very stable catalyst operation (46 h on stream) is observed and the EB selectivity above 90 mol.% is achieved at benzene conversion of 12.5%, which is very close to the maximum equilibrium conversion of benzene into EB at this temperature (13.6%). The obtained results have shown that the temperature has different effects on the rates of the different reaction steps, leading to the different product distributions at different temperatures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:512307 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Wong, Kae Shin |
| Contributors | Lukyanov, Dmitry ; Rigby, Sean |
| Publisher | University of Bath |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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