Ethanol dehydration with oxygen cofeeding over palladium catalyst supported on spherical silica particle with ceria modification

Abstract

Ethanol dehydration with oxygen cofeeding over palladium catalyst supported on spherical silica particle with ceria modification was carried out in fixed bed reactor under atmospheric pressure and temperature range of 150 ?C to 350 ?C (O2/Ethanol molar ratio = 2.2). The results showed that the effect of ceria modification of Pd/CeO2/SSP catalyst exhibited higher activity than Pd/SSP and CeO2/SSP at 200 ?C. Pd/CeO2/SSP catalyst yielded very the high ethanol conversion at 200 ?C about 57.7 %. However, the preparation method with different sequence of loading has significant effects on crystallite size, surface area, H2-TPR profile and catalytic activity. Pd-CeO2/SSP was synthesized by incipient wetness co-impregnation exhibits the highest ethanol conversion at 200 ?C about 66.0 % due to its high crystallite size (ca. 5.4 nm) and different interaction between metals and promoter that was proven by H2-TPR. The results also presented that the various amounts of oxygen cofeed of Pd/SSP catalyst had ethanol conversion at 175 ?C about 29.3 % and ethanol conversion of Pd-CeO2/SSP was observed at 250 ?C about 31.3 % for decreased oxygen cofeeding (O2/Ethanol molar ratio = 1.1), whereas in the�absence oxygen cofeeding, it showed less conversion at high temperature for all catalyst. Furthermore, ethanol can be converted to CO2 from combustion reaction of hydrocarbon with oxygen.