Because of the growing demand for high-quality fuels, the light cycle oil fraction improvement including cetane number improvement is important. The main way to reach this improvement is the ring… Click to show full abstract
Because of the growing demand for high-quality fuels, the light cycle oil fraction improvement including cetane number improvement is important. The main way to reach this improvement is the ring opening of cyclic hydrocarbons, and a highly effective catalyst should be found. Cyclohexane ring openings are a possible option to investigate the catalyst activity. In this work, we investigated rhodium-loaded catalysts prepared using the commercially available industrial supports: single-component ones, SiO2 and Al2O3; and mixed oxides CaO + MgO + Al2O3 and Na2O + SiO2 + Al2O3. The catalysts were prepared by incipient wetness impregnation and investigated by N2 low-temperature adsorption-desorption, XRD, XPS, DRS UV-Vis and DRIFT spectroscopy, SEM, and TEM with EDX. The catalytic tests were performed in cyclohexane ring opening in the range of 275–325 °C. The best result was demonstrated by the sample 1Rh/CaMgAlO: the selectivity to n-hexane was about 75% while the cyclohexane conversion was about 25% at 275 °C. The space-time yield was up to 12 mmoln-hexane gcat−1h−1.
               
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