Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.48, No.2, 713-718, 2009
Combined Methane CO2 Reforming and Dehydroaromatization for Enhancing the Catalyst Stability
The combination of methane dry reforming (MDR) and methane dehydroaromatization (MDA) effectively improved the stability of the MDA catalyst. By using integrated Mo/Al2O3 and Mo/MCM-49 catalysts at 1023 K, the conversion of methane only decreases slowly to 8.2% at 34 h, whereas it decreases rapidly to 3.5% even at 15 h for the MDA reaction. This promotion effect is caused by the coexistence of CO and H-2 formed by methane CO2 reforming, which significantly reduces the coke formation. CO may reduce the coke deposited on the Bronsted acidic sites, which is mainly responsible for the deactivation, by dissociating on the surface of the Mo/MCM-49 catalyst with the formation of active oxygen species. Hydrogen eliminates the coke through hydrogenation, leading to a slow coke deposition rate on the surface of the catalyst. As a result, the deposition rate of the coke associated with the Bronsted acid sites in the combined reaction system with the coexistence of CO and H-2 is much lower than that of the MDA reaction, showing a very slow deactivation pattern.