New catalyst to help or alleviate global propylene shortage

Author: Hong Hengfei, Zhou Wei, reporter Jiang Yun

83%

In the continuous 220-hour "endurance" test, the aerobic dehydrogenation process catalyzed by this new zeolite molecular sieve maintained a selectivity of up to 83%, with a conversion rate of 32.

Looking around, polypropylene plastic bottles, crystal clear "plexiglass", and even daily necessities such as baby's diapers are all products of propylene deep processing.

Where does the huge amount of propylene come from? In the world's "new" propylene production lines, the technology of propane dehydrogenation to propylene has begun to dominate.

Get rid of oil dependence and demand more propylene from propane

Propylene is one of the basic organic chemical raw materials with the highest output in the world.

"The limitation of this route lies in the dependence on petroleum.

Propane is abundant in nature, and it is the main component of shale gas.

    Researcher Wang Liang, a member of the research team, added that another advantage of this technology is that propane is very cheap.

    It is worth noting that this type of technology is also divided into two routes: anaerobic dehydrogenation and aerobic dehydrogenation.

    The other is the aerobic dehydrogenation route, which is expected to show advantages in energy consumption and anti-carbon deposition.

    Revisiting the "dead end" The isolated boron performance is gratifying

    In 2016, the I.

    Studies in the academic circle have pointed out that although boron nitride has good selectivity, its catalytic activity and water resistance stability are still difficult to meet actual needs, and a consistent negative judgment has been formed: the catalytic activity of boron catalysts comes from multiple boron centers.

    But the joint R&D team decided to return to the "dead end" to find out.

    Years of catalyst research and development experience tells them that there are still many scientific questions to be ascertained, such as, where are the active sites of boron-based catalysts? How does it exert its catalytic activity? To this end, the research group designed a zeolite molecular sieve catalyst material centered on isolated boron.

    Wang Liang said that in addition to focusing on the active site itself, the "environment" in which the catalyst is designed is also the key.

    To the surprise of the research group, this catalyst with a boron center in a specific coordination environment showed excellent catalytic performance in the aerobic dehydrogenation of propane, far exceeding the traditional supported boron oxide catalytic materials.

    The paper review experts believe that this research breaks the traditional cognition that the isolated boron center cannot catalyze the propane dehydrogenation reaction, and further deepens the understanding of propane dehydrogenation and its active centers, and is a step towards industrially realizing propane aerobic dehydrogenation to propylene.