(621cm) Selective Oxidation of Ethane to Acetic Acid over Mo16V6.37Nb2.05Pdx

Selective Oxidation of Ethane to Acetic Acid over Mo₁₆V_6.37Nb_2.05Pd_x

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YOUSEF S. AL-ZEGHAYER^{1, 2,} *, ABDULRHMAN S. AL-AWADI¹, WAHEED ALMASRY¹, MALIK ALALAHMAD¹ SULAIMAN AL-MAYMAN³ and MOUSTAFA A. SOLIMAN^{1, 4}

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

²Director of Industrial Catalysts Chair

³King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

⁴Department of Chemical Engineering, The British University in Egypt, Al-Shorouk City, Egypt

*Corresponding author: E-mail: yszs@ksu.edu.sa

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 The oxidation of ethane to acetic acid over supported multicomponent metal oxides (Mo-V-NbOx) catalyst in the presence of palladium was investigated. Titania P25 of Degussa has been examined as a support. Ethane oxidation was carried out in a fixed bed reactor at 200-275⁰C and 200 psi. Catalyst characterization was carried out using XRD and BET surface area. Changes of preparation sequence were carried out to enhance the activity of Mo-V-Nb system toward acetic acid formation. Rearrangement of the addition of niobium oxalate led to increase acetic acid selectivity from 79.42% at 9.31% ethane conversion to 84.37% at 11.07% ethane conversion at the same reaction temperature. Therefore acetic acid yield is enhanced to reach 9.34x10^-2 % at 240⁰C.On the other hand, the selectivity of unselective products (CO_x) decreased with preparation change from 20.09% to 15.22%. Titania phase effects was also investigated and it was found that as titania phase changes from anatase to rutile the catalyst becomes less efficient.