Production of propene from 1-butene metathesis reaction on tungsten based heterogeneous catalysts

A new propene production route from 1-butene metathesis has been developed on heterogeneous 10WO3/Al2O3-HY catalysts with different HY contents. It is found that the catalysts play bi-functionally first for the isomerization of 1-butene to 2-butene and then for the cross-metathesis between 1-butene and 2-butene to propene and 2-pentene. The combination of HY zeolite and Al2O3 is prerequisite for the production of propene. The propene yield keeps increasing with the HY content in the range of 10–70 wt%, where 10WO3/Al2O3-70HY exhibits the highest propene yield. The MS-H2-TPR and MS-O2-TPO characterizations indicate that the increase of HY content in the catalysts weakens the interaction between W species and supports, whereas enhance the probability of coking on the metal species and acid sites.