Experimental study and Mechanistic reactor modeling of toluene methylation over mesoporous catalyst to produce para-xylene

In this study mesoporous acidic Al-HMS(x) catalyst with different Si/Al ratio was synthesized by sol-gel method then XRD, NH3-TPD, and BET technique was used for catalyst characterization. Synthesized catalyst was utilized for para-xylene production from toluene methylation reaction in a vertical fixed bed reactor. Al-HMS (5) shows the best para-xylene selectivity and methanol conversion among the Al-HMS(x) material. Experimental data were compared with different reaction rate equations and Ramakirishna et al [1] model shows a good agreement with our experimental findings. Mathematical modeling were applied to achieve conversion profile versus temperature and reactor volume. In this venue, energy balance equation coupled with reaction network were solved using commercial Matlab software.

Keywords:

Toluene methylation , Mathematical reactor modeling , Kinetic study , Heterogeneous catalysis , para-xylene