Researchers reported new progress in the study of crystal size sensitivity in dimethyl ethercarbonylation

Author: Time:2021-03-21 Click:

Ethanol has gained tremendous interest since it can be used as fuels,fuel additive, chemical feedstock, and so on.Up to now, the conventionalgrain-based fermentation is still the commercial route forethanol production round the world.Unfortunately, this is not suitablefor China based on theconsideration of food security of 1.4 billionpeople. Ethanol production from coal could enrich the resource and increase the production capacity.

Carbonylation of dimethyl ether is a key step in the coal-based ethanol route, and the catalyst used is mainly H-type mordenite zeolite. For many years, the research team of the DNL1204 group has been committed to the development of efficient and stable dimethyl ether carbonylation catalysts. Progress has been made in successively synthesized iron-containing MOR (Catal. Sci. Technol.) and the study of the carbonylation mechanism (J. Mol. Catal. A Chem.), and gained a deep understanding of the reaction.

Recently, the research team has made new progress in the study of the effect of mordenite crystal size on the carbonylation performance of dimethyl ether, and found that the carbonylation performance of dimethyl ether is sensitive to the crystal size of mordenite.

It was found that as the catalyst crystals decrease, the activity and stability of the catalysts are significantly improvedwith the similaracid properties. Through the adsorption performance test, it is found thatthe enhancement of the adsorption capability of CO and the improvement of the diffusion performance of the product methyl acetate are the reason for the improvement of the catalyst performance. Moreover, suitable catalyst crystal sizes for industrial applications are proposed.

These results are helpful for development ofindustrial catalysts with high-efficiencies for ethanol synthesis via DMEcarbonylation route.

Related research results, entitled "Crystal size sensitivity of HMOR zeolite in dimethyl ether carbonylation", were recentlypublished on Catalysis Communications.This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA). (Text by WEN fuli, ZHU wenliang)


Crystal size sensitivity of HMOR zeolite in dimethyl ether carbonylation. Fuli Wen, Xiangnong Ding, Xudong Fang,Hongchao Liu*, Wenliang Zhu*,Catalysis Communications, 154, 106309, 2021.

Email:heshasha@dicp.ac.cn   Copyright Division of Low-Carbon Catalysis and Engineering,DICP, CAS