Benzene Reduction in Reformate Gasoline by Competitive Hydrogenation: Effect of the Preparation Method

Abstract

AbstractThe hydrogenation of benzene in reformate gasoline was carried out over nickel supported on silica prepared by precipitation‐gel, co‐precipitation, deposition‐precipitation and sol‐gel techniques. The evaluation was investigated in a continuous fixed bed reactor fed by a stream of reformate gasoline at 398–473 K under atmospheric pressure. X‐ray diffraction, Field emission scanning electron microscopy, X‐ray fluorescence, energy dispersive X‐ray spectrometry‐map, H2 chemisorption and N2 adsorption/desorption techniques have been used to characterize the influence of preparation methods. In the present work, the influences of H2/benzene molar ratios and space velocities on catalytic activity were studied by calculating conversion, specific rate during the benzene hydrogenation. The results show that the surface area of supports is not effective on metal dispersion, and it depends upon the preparation method, the content of metal loading, and interaction between metal and supports. Benzene conversion with catalyst prepared by sol‐gel and deposition‐precipitation method was 4–6 times more than that of toluene. The best performance of benzene hydrogenation was achieved with catalyst prepared by deposition‐precipitation method at 448 K. Among the preparation method, deposition‐precipitation was the best method for preparation of nickel catalyst due to the high and homogeneous dispersion of nickel particles.