Mass transport limitations in zeolite catalysts: the dehydration of 1-phenyl-ethanol to styrene Original Research Article

The dehydration of 1-phenyl-ethanol to styrene is a critical step in the styrene/propene oxide manufacturing process. An important challenge is to achieve deep dehydration while minimising the oligomerisation of styrene to heavy products that deactivate the catalyst. The present study shows that zeolite-based catalysts can meet the challenge when designed and operated such as to avoid diffusion limitations in the mesopores of the binder. Indeed we achieved high conversion (>90%), reasonable selectivity (>90%) and largely improved catalyst life (>150 h) by using full-extrudate catalysts of low zeolite content that are running at low temperature (220°C) and moderate WHSV (∼2 g/gextrudate h)).