2021/11/10 by Dan Zhao, Xinxin Tian, Dmitry E. Doronkin +12 · 1 citation
Chemical Engineering · Chemistry · Materials Science · #Catalysis and Oxidation Reactions #Catalytic Processes in Materials Science #Zeolite Catalysis and Synthesis
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03923-3
openalex publication_date 2021/11/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract Propane dehydrogenation (PDH) to propene is an important alternative to oil-based cracking processes, to produce this industrially important platform chemical 1,2 . The commercial PDH technologies utilizing Cr-containing (refs. 3,4 ) or Pt-containing (refs. 5–8 ) catalysts suffer from the toxicity of Cr( vi ) compounds or the need to use ecologically harmful chlorine for catalyst regeneration 9 . Here, we introduce a method for preparation of environmentally compatible supported catalysts based on commercial ZnO. This metal oxide and a support (zeolite or common metal oxide) are used as a physical mixture or in the form of two layers with ZnO as the upstream layer. Supported ZnO x species are in situ formed through a reaction of support OH groups with Zn atoms generated from ZnO upon reductive treatment above 550 °C. Using different complementary characterization methods, we identify the decisive role of defective OH groups for the formation of active ZnO x species. For benchmarking purposes, the developed ZnO–silicalite-1 and an analogue of commercial K–CrO x /Al 2 O 3 were tested in the same setup under industrially relevant conditions at close propane conversion over about 400 h on propane stream. The developed catalyst reveals about three times higher propene productivity at similar propene selectivity.