Propene production at low temperature by bimetallic Ni-Mo and Ni-Re catalysts on mesoporous MCM-41 prepared using template ion exchange

Abstract

In this work the direct conversion of ethene to propene was carried out using bimetallic Ni-Mo and Ni-Re over MCM-41 and aluminized MCM-41. It was intended to improve typical Ni based catalysts by including a metathesis active metal. All catalysts were characterized by powder-XRD, N2-physisorption, H2-TPR and TEM. Ni-Mo catalysts revealed the formation of bulk mixed molybdenum-nickel-aluminosilicates on the MCM-41 materials. The contrary case was revealed for the Ni-Re catalysts where a weak interaction between Ni, Re and MCM-41 was observed. All materials were catalytically tested in the gas phase reaction of directly converting ethene into propene using a fixed bed reactor. These results revealed no improvement of the catalytic activity when using Ni-Mo catalyst compared to well known Ni on MCM-41 catalysts. This suggests that Mo is not offering active metathesis sites. In contrast, Ni-Re based catalysts revealed a high selectivity of propene at lower temperatures than the Ni-catalysts. However, the conversion of ethene decreased significantly. Nevertheless, the reduced temperature might avoid the trend of catalyst deactivation observed at high temperature. Still, a deeper characterization of the Ni-Re catalyst is required to understand the role of Re in the direct conversion of ethene to propene.