Study On Selective Synthesis Of Acrolein From Gas-Phase Dehydration Of Glycerol

Because of the increasing scarcity of oil energy, biodiesel as a replaced feedstock has attracted much attention. With the industrial production of biological diesel oil, the yield of glycerol, the main byproduct of biodiesel production process, has risen as years. Therefore, more and more researchers focus on the development of an economical follow-up chemistry of glycerol.In the products of glycerol decomposition, acrolein plays the crucial connecting role as a versatile organic chemical intermediate. Acrolein can be used to generate acrylic acid and esters, which having a wide range of applications, by further oxidation. Besides, acrolein is an important polymerizable monmer to synthesize polymer materials. Using glycerol to produce acrolein is very significant.Gama-Al2O3 is the most commonly used industrial chemical catalyst or catalyst carrier. Its microporous structure possesses catalytic properties, such as modulation of the surface acidity and high thermal stability and chemical stability. Therefore, we use a modified gamma-Al2O3 catalyst on glycerol vapor dehydration synthesis of acrolein, the gas phase reactor using a fixed bed reaction apparatus. The effects of content of vanadium titanium, temperature, liquid hourly space velocity etc. were mainly investigated.From in-depth study of the glycerol dehydration reaction process conditions, we determined that the optimal reaction conditions on 3 wt% V-2wt% Ti/γ-Al2O3 catalyst were as follows:optimum reaction temperature:290℃, best glycerol solution flow:0.2ml/min, the best glycerol solution concentration was 20 wt%. Under this reaction conditions, the glycerol conversion was 74.31%, the acrolein selectivity was 79.35%.