FUEL 14 |
| iso-Butane or iso-pentane constitutes one of the major components of both clean and high-octane gasoline; it can be produced through the isomerization of n-butane or n-pentane using liquid sulfuric acid. The use of solid acid catalysts would be a significant improvement. However, solid acids used for the isomerization of light alkanes are subject to a rapid catalyst deactivation due to the coke formation over the active sites of catalysts. In order to supress the deactivation, a supercritical fluid is likely to become available as a new reaction medium and/or a new extraction medium. Therefore, we examined the isomerization of n-butane and n-pentane over Al-modified sulfated zirconia (SZA) as a solid acid under the supercritical conditions of n-alkanes, in which we expect that the fluid with high density and diffusion coefficient will extract the coke precursor effectively to maintain higher catalytic acitivity without serious deactivation. The active sites of SZA were characterized by XRD, FT-IR and XPS: SZA has larger acid amounts and stronger acidity than conventional sulfated zirconia (SZ). |
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Green Chemistry for Fuel Synthesis and Processing
8:45 AM-12:10 PM, Sunday, 10 September 2006 Palace -- California Parlor, Oral
Sci-Mix
Division of Fuel Chemistry |