The correlation between nitrogen species in coke and NO_x formation during regeneration

Nitrogen oxides （NOx） emission during the regeneration ofcoked fluid catalytic cracking （FCC） catalysts is an en- vironmental issue. In order to identify the correlations between nitrogen species in coke and different nitrogen- containing products in tail gas, three coked catalysts with multilayer structural coke molecules were prepared in a fixed bed with model compounds （o-xylene and quinoline） at first. A series of characterization methods were used to analyze coke, including elemental analysis, FT-IR, XPS, and TG-MS. XPS characterization indicates all coked catalysts present two types of nitrogen species and the type with a higher binding energy is related with the inner part nitrogen atoms interacting with acid sites. Due to the stronger adsorption ability on acid sites for basic nitrogen compounds, the multilayer structural coke has unbalanced distribution of carbon and ni- trogen atoms between the inner part and the outer edge, which strongly affects gas product formation. At the early stage of regeneration, oxidation starts from the outer edge and the product NO can be reduced to N2 in high CO concentration. At the later stage, the inner part rich in nitrogen begins to be exposed to 02. At this period, the formation of CO decreases due to lack of carbon atoms, which is not beneficial to the reduction of NO. There- fore, nitrogen species in the inner part of multilayer structural coke contributes more to NOx formation. Based on the multilayer structure model of coke molecule and its oxidation behavior, a possible strategy to control NOx emission was discussed merely from concept.

Color stability of FCC gasoline

The color changes of one representative FCC gasoline were studied. The red substance in the FCC gasoline was concentrated and separated by chromatography and analyzed by elemental analysis and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry （GC-MS）. The main components of the red substance were found to be aromatic amines. Complexes formed from quinones and aromatic amines are the reason why gasoline being red, and acids can destroy the complex by reaction with aromatic amines leading to decoloration of red gasoline. A mechanism for the color change of gasoline is proposed.

Preparation and Characterization of a New Quercetin-bonded Stationary Phase for High Performance Liquid Chromatography

A quercetin-bonded silica gel stationary phase （QUSP） containing natural flavonoid ligand was first prepared via γ-glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane （KH-560） as a coupling reagent for high-performance liquid chromatography. Its chemical structure was characterized by Fourier infrared spectroscopy, elemental analysis, thermal thermogravimetry and 13C cross polarization/magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance （CP/MAS NMR）. The chromatographic property of QUSP was systematically evaluated by using neutral, basic and acidic aromatic com- pounds as probes. In order to clarify its retention mechanism, a comparative study of QUSP with conventional oc- tadecylsilyl-bonded stationary phase （ODS） was also carried out under the same conditions. The results showed that the new quercetin-bonded phase exhibited an excellent reversed-phase chromatographic property with relatively weak hydrophobicity. However, it has an advantage over ODS in the fast separation of polar aromatic compounds because the quercetin ligand could provide various sites besides hydrophobicity, such as hydrogen bonding, dipole-dipole, n-n staking and charge transfer interactions. QUSP was performed in the baseline separations of ion- ized polar basic or acidic compounds, including pyridines, anilines, pyrimidines, purines and phenols with symmet- ric peak shape in common mobile phases without buffer salt within relatively short time. The natural ligands from herbs are readily available and contain a variety of active sites, which facilitate the exploration of industrial chromatographic separation materials for green products.