Control of acid-site location of ZSM-5 zeolite membrane and its application to the MTO reaction

ZSM-5 zeolite membrane, which shows high selectivity toward olefins in the methanol conversion, was developed by controlling the location of the acid sites. First, the ZSM-5 zeolite catalyst membrane without pinholes was successfully prepared by synthesizing a ZSM-5 zeolite layer on an outer surface of a cylindrical alumina ceramic filter. The membrane was used as the catalytic membrane reactor to recover olefins from methanol. Though the olefins were successfully produced from methanol with high selectivity (ca. 80%), production of paraffin and aromatics was observed at the feed side of the zeolite membrane. To prevent the such production, the location of the acid site of the ZSM-5 zeolite membrane was controlled by a new method called the catalytic cracking of silane (CCS) method. Selective deactivation of acid sites at the outer surface of the zeolite membrane (feed side of reactant) by the CCS method allowed us to increase the selectivity of the olefins by 10% as compared to the untreated membrane.