Authors:

Sky Okpaku

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About Paper:

Crude oil refining has a large carbon footprint and produces heavy toxic byproducts, but by utilizing natural gas we can create transportation range fuels and commodity feedstock chemicals by directly converting natural gas liquids into hydrocarbons. Industrial processes utilize zeolites to synthesize smaller hydrocarbons, however, various constraints arise from the porous and crystalline nature of zeolite catalysts. To address these issues, we investigated amorphous Lewis Acid catalysts to catalyze oligomerization reactions without the restrictions that arise due to various properties of zeolites. Unfortunately, amorphous Lewis acid catalysts have been shown to have much lower reaction rates than zeolites, so we need to synthesize Lewis acid catalysts with reaction rates comparable to zeolites. Preliminary data suggests Lewis acid aluminum based catalysts have been shown to have higher reaction rates than Lewis acid catalysts that utilize larger metals when catalyzing ethylene oligomerization. To test these aluminum catalysts and their conversion rates, place the aluminum catalyst over a bed of quartz wool in a reaction tube then vary the temperature, run gas olefins through the tube, and analyze data produced by a GC connected to the reactor. Altogether, my team found that Aluminum catalysts serve as stronger Lewis Acids in these processes because of charge density and coordination with double bonds in olefins so these are more reactive than larger metal catalysts. Overall, our catalyst produces longer chained hydrocarbons from ethylene at rates higher than that of previously studied catalysts. Consequently, our aluminum catalyst could potentially be a viable option in oligomerization reactions. Keywords: [no keywords provided]

Source:

Purdue University / 2025

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Co-authors:

Sky Okpaku