Adsorption of hexane isomers on ion‐exchanged mordenite

Abstract

To remove lead from petrol and thereby promote a cleaner environment, other means must be found to keep the octane number or anti-knock qualities of the petrol high. It is found that this can be accomplished by increasing the proportion of highly branched chain hydrocarbon isomers in the fuel. This in turn promotes processes for the separation of the hydrocarbon isomers and in the case of hexane, it is an easy matter to separate out n-hexane from the more substituted isomers but it is difficult to separate out the mono- from the di-branched isomers. This work addresses itself to such challenging separations using modified zeolites as the separating agent, and by studying the heats of sorption of these isomers on zeolites using gas chromatographic techniques to find a trend in the potential abilities of these modified zeolites to effect a good separation. In this work mordenite zeolite was modified by a range of double cation exchanges and the resulting modified zeolites were investigated for their ability to sorb the hexane isomers 3-methylpentane and 2,3-dimethylbutane. These two isomers are closely related in size as they both have the same kinetic diameter of 0.56 nm. In this work only heats of sorptionmore » have been investigated and measurement of the diffusion coefficients, which also affect the ability of the modified zeolites to act as good separating agents, is currently under investigation.« less