Effect of Steam on the Reaction Performance of Oxidative Dehydrogenation of Cyclohexane

Abstract

The effect of steam, fed to the fixed-bed microreactor reactor, on the oxidative dehydrogenation of cyclohexane over Mg3(VO4)2 catalyst was reported. The catalyst characterization results showed that the crystal structure, the electron cloud distributions of the active species and the oxygen species, and the reducibility of the active species are not influence by the introduction of steam. It was observed that steam added to the oxidative dehydrogenation of cyclohexane competes for sites required for gas-phase oxygen activation, which catalyst lattice oxygen utilization is not affected. The shorter residence time and the competition for sites with oxygen causes a decrease in cyclohexane conversion and a corresponding increase in selectivity to cyclohexene.