On the mechanism of the selective oxy-dehydrogenation of n-butenes to 1,3-butadiene on magnesium ferrite: an FT-IR study

Abstract

Publisher Summary The synthesis of butadiene is mainly based on the pure or oxidative dehydrogenation of n-butenes from the C4 oil cracking fraction. The oxy-dehydrogenation of n-butenes to 1,3-butadiene belongs to the “allylic oxidation” reaction class and should have, from the mechanistic point of view, features in common with other allylic oxidation reactions, such as the synthesis of acrolein from propene. The production of 1,3-butadiene needs catalysts that cannot adsorb butadiene strongly. Actually, this occurs on Mg ferrite and distinguishes the behavior of this material from that of vanadia-based catalysts that allow the oxidation of butenes to maleic anhydride and actually adsorb butadiene strongly. While ferrites perform quite well for butadiene synthesis, they are not effective catalysts for acrolein synthesis. For such reasons, FT-IR techniques are applied to selective oxidation catalysts. This chapter presents here the results on a Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) study of the interaction and oxidative conversion of n-butenes over MgFe 2 O 4 — that is, an active catalyst for butene oxy-dehydrogenation. The chapter discusses the activation of olefins over allylic oxidation catalysts and finds information on the masons that why ferrites are fine catalysts for allylic oxy-dehydrogenation of butenes but are not effective catalysts for allylic oxidation of propene.