The Dehydrogenation of Butyl Alcohols by the Molten-metal Catalysts

Abstract

Abstract In order to investigate the catalytic activity of molten metals, the dehydrogenation reactions of n-butyl alcohol, iso-butyl alcohol, and sec-butyl alcohol were carried out in the presence of molten zinc and molten indium (molten gallium was also used for the dehydrogenation of iso-butyl alcohol). According to the experimental results, all of these molten metals showed persistent catalytic activities and high selectivities for all the test reactions, and the decreasing order of the reactivity of the butyl alcohol isomers was found to be sec-butyl alcohol > iso-butyl alcohol > n-butyl alcohol. Among the three molten metals, i.e. Zn, Ga, and In, the activity and the selectivity of the molten zinc catalyst was outstandingly high. Further, kinetic analyses of the data showed that a compensation effect exists between the apparent activaiton energy, Ea, and the logarithmic frequency factor, logA.