Propane oxidation by vanadium supported on activated carbon from sugarcane straw

Abstract

A high surface area activated carbon was obtained from sugar cane straw by chemical activation with phosphoric acid and was used for the first time as a support for vanadium catalysts. This work aims to investigate the vanadium oxide species in a low surface density (up to 1Vatomnm−2) on this new support, especially applied to propane oxidation reaction. Moreover, commercial activated carbon materials were used as support for comparison. The discussion is conducted in terms of catalyst textural properties, nature and concentration of surface vanadium oxide species, surface functional groups, and their structure/reactivity relationship. All samples were characterized by adsorption-desorption of N2 (BET), scanning electron microscopy, coupled with energy dispersive microscopy (SEM-EDS), thermal analysis (TG-DTA), Boehm titration, ammonia thermo desorption (NH3-TPD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Laser Raman spectroscopy (RS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The obtained results show that vanadium oxide species, even at a very low density, are capable of converting propane (30%), producing propylene (10%), but still producing a high amount of COx products. However, it is worth noting that V-P bonds are the key factor for the Oxidative Dehydrogenation of Propane activity.