Contributions of Burtron H. Davis to Fischer–Tropsch Refining Catalysis: Dehydration as Applied to Processes for 1-Octene Production

Abstract

The contributions of Burtron H. Davis to the understanding and description of alcohol dehydration over metal oxide catalysts, is discussed and applied to process improvement and process synthesis. Some of the key findings from his work are that the dehydration mechanism over metal oxides involves a concerted removal of OH and adjacent H, that weakly basic metal oxides are sensitive to the acidity of the H abstracted during dehydration, and that anti-Saytzeff elimination is possible with >80 % selectivity over weakly basic metal oxides (In2O3, Y2O3, ZrO2, Eu2O3 and ThO2). These findings were applied to show how the dehydration step of the industrial Fischer–Tropsch based process for 1-heptene to 1-octene conversion can be improved through the use of a weakly basic metal oxide catalyst with low hydration activity. New processes were also suggested for the production of 1-octene from more commonly available feed materials, such as the C8 fraction of natural gas condensate and petroleum naphtha. These processes employed weakly basic metal oxide catalysts with high hydration activity.