Propylene is one of the most diverse building blocks in the petrochemical industry leading to an array of chemicals such as polypropylene, propylene oxide, and acrylonitrile. Conventional methods for propylene production suffer from low selectivity and high energy requirement. Propane dehydrogenation (PDH) is a promising technology for direct production of propylene and hydrogen. PDH is an endothermic reaction requiring elevated reaction temperatures to achieve considerable yields of propylene. Unfortunately, under high temperature conditions, the rates of side reactions such as cracking and coke formation are increased, leading to lower selectivity, rapid catalyst deactivation, and requiring frequent and costly catalyst regeneration.1 Herein, we report the design of a stable and selective alloy catalyst for PDH operating at the thermodynamic limit without the addition of H2 to the feed.2 Furthermore, we show that coupling this catalysts to n H2-removing SiO2/Al2O3 membrane, that are co-designed for the specific operating conditions, yields a PDH chemical conversion system that operates well above the thermodynamic equilibrium conversion limits with propylene selectivity that reaches unity and excellent stability.

Overcoming equilibrium and stability limitations in propane dehydrogenation by co-designing multicomponent catalyst/membrane systems

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