Investigation of the nickel amount on a silica-alumina support for ethylene production

BRUSSINO, P.; ULLA, M.A.; BORTOLOZZI, J.P.

Workshop; French-Argentinean Workshop on Heterogeneous Catalysis; 2023

Around 160 million tons of ethylene are produced annually [1]. This olefin is known worldwide as one of the most important chemicals since it is used in chemical industries as a feedstock in the production of a wide variety of compounds, ending up in the every-day consumer goods. Its globally-established production is the steam cracking of naphtha or ethane, a process for which the energy consumption for the production of 1 kg of ethylene ranges from 15 to 27 MJ/kg [2]. Also, the carbon footprint is estimated at 1.6 metric tons of CO2 per ton of produced ethylene. A greener alternative route for its production is the Oxidative Dehydrogenation of Ethane (ODE) reaction, because with an adequate catalyst it can be operated at lower temperatures (T˂500 °C) and high ethylene yields could be achieved. NiO-based supported catalysts are among the most studied materials for this reaction since nickel is relatively cheap and the catalytic performance is associated to the NiO-support interactions. By achieving strong NiO-support interactions, high ethylene selectivity can be obtained. Nevertheless, ethane conversion is generally low. Therefore, in this work several Ni loadings incorporated to a commercial silica-alumina support [3] were analyzed, with the aim to investigate the influence of the amount of Ni on both the NiO generated species and the catalytic performance