Catalytic cracking of light diesel over Au/ZSM-5 catalyst for increasing propylene production

The catalytic cracking of light diesel oil （235–337 ＆#176;C） over gold‐modified ZSM‐5 was investigated in a small confined fluidized bed at 460 ＆#176;C and ambient pressure. Different Au/ZSM‐5 catalysts were prepared by a modified deposition‐precipitation method by changing the preparation procedure and the amount of gold loading and were characterized by X‐ray diffraction, N2 adsorp‐tion‐desorption, temperature‐programmed desorption of NH3, transmission electron microscopy and inductively coupled plasma spectrometer. It was found that a small amount of gold had a posi‐tive effect on the catalytic cracking of light diesel oil and increased propylene production at a rela‐tively low temperature. The maintenance of the ZSM‐5 MFI structure, pore size distribution and the density of weak and strong acid sites of the Au/ZSM‐5 catalysts depended on the preparation pa‐rameters and the Au loading. Simultaneous enhancement of the micro‐activity and propylene pro‐duction relies on a synergy between the pore size distribution and the relative intensity of the weak and strong acid sites. A significant improvement in the micro‐activity index with an increase of 4.5 units and in the propylene selectivity with an increase of 23.2 units was obtained over the Au/ZSM‐5 catalyst with an actual Au loading of 0.17 wt%.

Investigation on the cation location, structure and performances of rare earth-exchanged Y zeolite

A series of Y zeolites exchanged with different amount of cerium and lanthanum cations were investigated. Comprehensive routine analysis tools including X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy（XPS）, X-ray fluorescence（XRF）, X-ray diffraction（XRD） and Py-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy（Py-FTIR） were used to identify the cation location, and the result was verified via XRD Rietveld study. The results revealed that almost all the RE cations in RE-4, most cations in RE-8 to RE-14 and part of cations in RE-16 were located in the sodalite cage. The Al^（IV）/（Al^V＋Al^（VI）） values revealed by ^（27）Al MAS NMR spectra, the silicon aluminum ratio of the framework（SARF） values deduced from ^（29）Si MAS NMR spectra and XRD, and hydroxyl amount were reasonably in accordance with the location and content of rare earth cations. The hydrothermal stability derived from in situ XRD investigation and catalyst activity provided by micro-activity test manifested that samples RE-8 to RE-14 exhibited better performances than RE-4 and RE-16, among which RE-12 had the best properties. The phenomena were interpreted by the cation location and structural properties.