Engineering Commons^™

Natural Gas Conversion Into Value Added Chemicals Using Solid Acid Catalysts, Swarom Ravindra Kanitkar

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Direct, non-oxidative conversion of natural gas to value-added chemicals has been identified as one of the grand challenges of the 21^st century. Circumventing indirect and costly reforming steps is highly sought after and solid acids can play an important role in that.

The direct conversion of methane to higher hydrocarbons and hydrogen can be catalyzed using “superacids” at < 450 °C. Reported superacid catalysts in solid, liquid, and gas phase included sulfated zirconia (SZ), HF-SbF₅, FSO₃H-SbF₅, and HBr-AlBr₃. Liquid and gas phase superacids presented difficulties in separation while the solid ones provided low yields. Here, we report a new class of Br-based solid superacids, AlBr_x/H-ZSM-5 (“ABZ-5”, …