Research For New Type Catalysts Of Synthesizes Morpholine

With the development of petro-chemical industry, morpholine, as animportant commerce use of the meticulous petrochemicals and intermediateof fine chemicals, has been widely used for preparation for rubber, medicine,pesticide, coating material and so on.Up to now, the main process to synthesize morpholine is based on thereaction of diethylene glycol (DEG) with ammonia (NH₃) in the presence ofcatalysts. However the major problem of the synthesis process mentionedabove is that prepared catalysts are of lower activities. So the methods andconditions of preparing the highly activitied new catalysts for preparation ofmorpholine were studied in this paper.A series of supported nickel-based catalysts for preparation for MOR havebeen designed and prepared by the incipient impregnation methods. Theeffects of different types of supports and conditions for preparation on thephysical-chemical properties of catalysts have been characterized by using thetechnologies of nitrogen adsorption-adsorption (BET), X-ray diffraction(XRD), scan electron microscopy (SEM), and the catalytic activities,selectivies of the catalysts have been evaluated.It has been found that among the catalysts prepared by coprecipitation method, the nickel-based catalyst supported on Al₂O₃-3H20(800℃/4 h)which was prepared at 60℃, dryed at 120℃for 2 hours calcinated at 400℃for 3 hours and reduced at 300℃in 10% hydrogen and 90% nitrogen mixedgas, has showed the high activity and selectivity.Catalyst prepared above was used in technolygy of synthesizingmorpholine. The Optimal reaction conditions were given as follow: thereaction temperature is 215℃, the pressure is 2.0～2.2 MPa, the weight ratioof catalyst is 0.8%～1.2%, it is found that the activity of the nickel-basedcatalyst supported on Al₂O₃ with 21.78 wt% Ni, 3 wt% TiO₂, 18.06 wt% ZnOand 13.89 wt% CuO is the best one among all the catalysts in this work. After2 hours, conversion of diethylene glycol, selectivity and yield of morpholineare 100%, 99.5% and 98.5%, respectively. The catalyst could be utilized over 40times without apparent decrease of catalytic performances.