N-hexane hydrocracking using zeolite catalysts

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to study the effects of reaction conditions on the hydrocracking of n-hexane the mordenite and Na-Y catalysts. A fixed bed, down-flow and high pressure tubular reactor set was designed and constructed to carry out the experiments. In the present investigation the temperature was varied within the range of 260 °C-340 °C while the pressure and the space velocity was varied -1 within the range of 30-95 atg and 2,000-8,000 hr-1, respectively. By either increasing the reaction temperature, lowering the pressure, or decreasing the space velocity, the total conversion of n-hexane as well as the yield of the LPG products was found to increase. The increase in yield of the LPG products by decreasing the space velocity was, however, less than that obtained by increasing the reaction temperature or lowering the pressure. In any case, the gasoline product was less as the LPG products rose. Regarding to the types of Catalysts, the mordenite catalyst gave a higher yield of the LPG products than the gasoline products. On the other hand, the Na-Y catalyst gave a higher yield of gasoline than LPG products. The research octane number of the gasoline portion products was improved after hydrocracking in both cases of catalysts.