Heterogeneous catalysts design towards bio-economy concept: From biomass-derived furans to aromatics

FERRERO, GABRIEL ORLANDO; ELIAS, VERÓNICA RITA; IDRICEANU, MADALINA G.; EIMER, GRISELDA ALEJANDRA; DOMINE, MARCELO E

Congreso; 11th World Congress of Chemical Engineering; 2023

Benzene, toluene, and xylenes (BTX) are the major commodity chemicals serving a vast range of industries with large global economic impact and are currently obtained exclusively from petroleum feedstock. Alternative renewable sources from biomass are raised as a solution to satisfy the pressing needs for a fully sustainable biocommodity industry. For this reason, the chemistry of materials has focused on the synthesis of catalysts that can transform biomass into renewable chemical compounds of interest. In this work, the SBA-15 material was modified with Al to incorporate a specific Br/Le ratios of acid sites to make a tailor-made catalyst for the aromatization reaction of 2,5 dimethyl furan (2,5DMF) and ethylene. To correlate the catalytic activity of the materials with their structure and nature, the solids were characterized by various techniques such as XRD, ICP, N2 physisorption, and IR-FT of adsorbed pyridine. The objective of this work was to maximize the production of xylene (p-xy) using different Al contents in SBA-15 to then optimize the reaction conditions. In a first step, four Al contents were evaluated in the aromatic reaction, and the catalytic activity was correlated to the presence of Lewis (Le) and Brönsted (Br) acid sites. The catalyst Al(34)SBA-15, was the one that presented the highest activity. In a second stage, the performance of the catalyst to produce p-xy was optimized by varying the concentration of reagents, catalyst, pressure and temperature.