Methylcyclohexane dehydrogenation - A convenient way for hydrogen storage

Some highly active and selective precious metal catalysts were studied for methycyclohexane (MCH) dehydrogenation. All the catalysts showed comparable activities, however, 0.3 wt % Pd/??-Al2O3 showed very low activities compared to the others under the same conditions. The Pt metal was much better catalyst for the dehydrogenation of MCH than the Pd metal. Equal amounts of the addition of Re or Pd to the Pt catalyst almost had no effect on the activity of the catalyst. Increasing the loading of Pt on the support from 0.3 wt % to 1 wt % had a slight but negative effect on the activity of the catalyst. However, this may be explained when considering metal dispersion and the orientation of the metal atoms exposed to the surface. The dehydrogenation reaction under all conditions and with all the catalytic samples was very clean with toluene as the only major by-product. In-house 1 wt % Pt/Al2O3 was the least selective following just after Pt-Re/Al2O3, which had an intermediate selectivity. The remaining catalysts had comparable selectivity. This is an abstract presented at the 2009 AIChE Annual Meeting (Nashville, TN 11/8-13/2009).