The low temperature oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of ethane to ethylene is an attractive alternative to the steam cracking at high temperature. We apply a straight-forward solid state method to the synthesis of unsupported Ni-Nb oxide composites for the ethane ODH reaction. The structure of Ni-Nb oxide was characterized by a variety of techniques: XRD, SEM, TEM, TPR, and N2 adsorption, which confirms that the Nb was doped into the NiO forming a Ni-Nb oxide solid solution. These new materials efficiently catalyze the oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of ethane to ethylene at relatively low temperature (T &lt; 300 °C). They are much more stable than the corresponding composites prepared by other chemical methods; more than 90% of their original intrinsic activity is retained after 50 hours with time-on-stream. Besides, stability is much less affected by the Nb content, than in composites prepared by classical “wet” syntheses. The productivity of 0.28 g ethylene g catalyst-1h-1, is achieved at 350°C over the Ni85Nb15 composite calcined at 300 °C. It is higher than that of the Nb-NiO reference.

Dry method synthesis of efficient Ni-Nb oxide catalysts for low temperature oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene

249th National Meeting (2015)

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