Benzene selective hydrogenation over supported Ni (nano-) particles catalysts: Catalytic and kinetics studies

This report aims to reduce the benzene in a mixture of benzene and toluene as a model reaction using catalytic hydrogenation. In this research, we developed a series of catalysts with different supports such as Ni/HMS, Ni/HZSM-5, Ni/HZSM5-HMS, Ni/Al2O3 and Ni/SiO2. Kinetic of this reaction was investigated under various hydrogen and benzene pressures. For more study, two kinetic models have also been selected and tested to describe the kinetics for this reaction. Both used models, the power law and Langmuir-Hinshelwood, provided a good fit toward the experimental data and allowed to determine the kinetic parameters. Among these catalysts, Ni/Al2O3 showed the maximum benzene conversion (99.19%) at 130 °C for benzene hydrogenation. The lowest toluene conversion was observed for Ni/SiO2. Furthermore, this catalyst presented high selectivity to benzene (75.26%) at 130 °C. The catalytic performance (activity, selectivity and stability) and kinetics evaluations were shown that the Ni/SiO2 is an effective catalyst to hydrogenate benzene. It seems that the surface properties particularly pore size are effective parameter compared to other factors such as acidity and metal dispersion in this process.