Cheap catalyst for biofuel production

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Dimethyl ether (DME) is amongst one of the most promising alternative, renewable and clean fuels being considered as a future energy carrier. In this study, the comparative catalytic performance of γ-Al 2O 3 prepared from two common precursors (aluminum nitrate (AN) and aluminum chloride (AC)) is presented. The impact of calcination temperature was evaluated in order to optimize both the precursor and pre-treatment conditions for the production of DME from methanol in a fixed bed reactor. The catalysts were characterized by TGA, XRD, BET and TPD-pyridine. Under reaction conditions where the temperature ranged from 180°C to 300°C with a WHSV=12.1h -1 it was found that all the catalysts prepared from AN(η-Al 2O 3) showed higher activity, at all calcination temperatures, than those prepared from AC(γ-Al 2O 3). In this study the optimum catalyst was produced from AN and calcined at 550°C. This catalyst showed a high degree of stability and had double the activity of the commercial γ-Al 2O 3 or 87% of the activity of commercial ZSM-5(80) at 250°C.

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