Oxidative dehydrogenation of n-octane using Ba and Ga-modified faujasite type catalysts prepared by different methods

Ionic exchange and isomorphic substitution were used for the synthesis and modification of faujasite (zeolite and silicalite Y) catalysts. These two methods were used to synthesize 1 wt% extra-framework and framework gallium modified faujasite zeolites respectively, with a Si/M ratio of 2.6, where M = Al and/or Ga. For the silicalite catalyst, 3.5 wt% of Ga was used to maintain the Si/Ga ratio. A series of BaY, Ga-BaY(IS) and Ga-BaY(Sil) were prepared by isomorphic substitution, where (IS) and (Sil) represent Isomorphic Substitution and Silicalite respectively. Ga-BaY(IE) and BaGa-NaY(IE), were prepared by ionic exchange (IE) using the synthesised BaY and a commercial NaY for the latter. For all the prepared catalysts, barium was kept constant at about 4.2 wt% except for BaGa-NaY(IE), where Ba was 1.4 wt%. For the sodium containing catalysts, Na was 10.3 wt%. Pyridine IR and chemisorption techniques showed that the catalysts prepared had more Lewis acid sites compared to Brønsted acid sites. The Na containing zeolite had the highest total acidity compared to those containing only Ba. Aluminium free silicalite contained the least total acidity, which is consistent with previous studies. Catalytic data at iso-conversion (7 ± 1%) showed that the Ba incorporated by ionic exchange zeolites and the silicalite were more selective to octenes (36 and 33% respectively) and less selective to COx (35 and 33% respectively) compared to the isomorphically substituted Ba catalysts. Selectivity to cracked products was reduced when aluminium, responsible for the strong Brønsted acid sites, was eliminated from the synthesis.