Aromatics are indispensable basic chemicals. Syngas (CO and H2), usually a platform fortransformation of non-petroleum resources, can be converted into various valuable chemicalsand fuelsby traditional Fischer–Tropsch synthesis, but aromatics can be hardly produced.In recent years, a significant progress has been made in the study of syngas to aromaticsthrough the concept ofbifunctional composite catalyst (oxide-zeolite). However, because the deep hydrogenation reaction leads to the formation of a large amount of alkanes,successful application of the cheap and environmentally friendlyZnO to the oxide-zeolite composite catalysts for syngas-to-aromatics (STA) reaction is still challenging.
Recently, a research group led by Prof. Wenliang Zhu and Prof. Liu Zhongmin from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciencesdiscovered syngas-to-aromatics performance of ZnO&H-ZSM-5 composite catalyst can be significantly enhanced via Mn Modulation.
They achieve 80.1% aromatics in products excluding CO2with 14.8% CO conversion over amixed composite catalyst containing H-ZSM-5 and nano-sized porousZnO modulated by Mn. Only 0.6-3.0 wt% of Mn can lead to a dramatic decrease in the particle size of ZnO and an obvious increase of oxygen vacancies. The ability of syngas conversion is positively correlated with oxygen vacancy concentration, whereas the ability of olefins hydrogenation is negatively correlated with it. This provides a new strategy for STA catalyst designing.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the “Transformational Technologies for Clean Energy and Demonstration”, Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Text by Yi Fu).
Enhancing syngas-to-aromatics performance of ZnO&H-ZSM-5 composite catalyst via Mn modulation. Yi Fu, Youming Ni, Wenliang Zhu. Zhongmin Liu*, Journal of Catalysis, 383:97-102, 2020.
