(575p) Oxidative Coupling of Methane Using Nano-Sized Hydroxyapatite Catalyst

Recently, with the increase of oil price, many researchers were concentrated on natural gas. Generally, a main component of natural gas is known to methane. Although a quantity of methane is large, an usage of methane is not easy. The major difficulty in the use of methane is storage and transportation. Thus, it is necessary to develop the production system of olefin which is converted from methane. If we can convert methane to olefin directly, storage and transportation of methane get easier.

It was been studied that Pb has activity for OCM(oxidative coupling of methane) reaction. However, Pb component have a tendency of ease evaporation at high temperature. Thus, it was tried to prepare a catalyst as Pb-substituted hydroxyapatite(Ca10-xPbx(PO4)6(OH)2). The catalyst showed high activity and good durability in the high temperature reaction (700~800oC).

In this study, SEM, XRD and ICP were performed for the characterization of the catalysts prepared by coprecipitation and hydrothermal method. It could be confirmed that hydroxyapatite crystal were synthesized as nano-sized particle. The reactivity of catalysts was investigated with GC. It was revealed that the catalysts show high activity and stability during the reaction.

As the result of activity test, it was found that the amount of Pb substituted, the length of furnace and the calcination temperature are main factors.