Oxidative Aromatization of Ethane

Abstract

This study is focused on examining the incorporation of oxidative dehydrogenation into the aromatization of ethane, utilizing thermodynamic analysis and catalytic experiments. The catalysts were characterized by inverse temperature programmed reduction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results indicated that a blend of the M1 catalyst, containing oxides of vanadium, niobium, and tellurium, with H-ZSM-5, serves as an effective catalyst system for the oxidative aromatization of ethane at T = 380 °C. The M1's role in the oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane contributes to de-bottlenecking the essential step of the reaction. On the zeolitic catalyst aromatic compounds are formed from a surface hydrocarbon pool. In parallel, the oxidation of these intermediates was observed. Also, the formation of paraffins through H-transfer was evident from the catalytic results. Although the zeolite underwent significant deactivation due to coking, the M1 catalyst demonstrated highly stable activity. Interestingly, the system did not show any synergistic effects. Based on the structure-activity relation of the catalytic system a reaction mechanism is proposed.