Cinética da reação de desidratação de etanol em alumina

Abstract

Ethene or ethylene is a hydrocarbon mainly used in plastic manufacture, through the polymerization. The production of ethene in large scale is performed through cracking process of oil light fractions. In the incessant search of clean and renewable sources to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, it has been studied the ethylene production with alternative routes. Among the alternative ways of production, the dehydration reaction of ethanol with acid catalysts, like alumina, consists in a very interesting route, since ethanol is widely produced in Brazil, mainly by fermentation of sugarcane juice. However, with relation to the reaction mechanism of the catalytic conversion of the ethanol to ethene, there are some questions when aluminas are used. Therefore, the objective of this work is the study of two metastable forms of aluminas with different acid characteristics, γ- e η-alumina, in order to elucidate the mechanism of dehydration reaction of ethanol to ethene and compare the performance of these two aluminas. For that, two aluminum hydroxides, boehmite and bayerite, were treated in three different temperatures, leading to six catalysts with different acid properties. The catalysts were characterized and in situ reactions with DRIFTS were performed to understand the reaction mechanism. Also, it has studied the reaction kinetics with experiments in laboratory scale unit reaction. With literature information and DRIFTS analysis, some kinetic models were proposed in order to obtain a reaction rate model and to estimate the kinetics parameters. The models presented good adjusts to the experimental data and contributed to the comprehension of the reaction mechanism of ethanol catalytic dehydration.