Towards a New Oxidation Process Using Ozone to Regenerate Coked Catalysts

This work focuses on the regeneration of a zeolite catalyst from industry deactivated by fouling with coke. To replace high temperature combustion, a common and energy intensive process, an oxidation process under milder conditions (50 °C–200 °C) has been investigated using ozone. Coked zeolite has been oxidized by an ozone stream in a fixed bed reactor, and regeneration kinetics was followed by analyzing carbon content of the particles and ozone concentration at the outlet. The effects of temperature, time on stream and ozone inlet concentration on carbon removal efficiency were studied. Moreover, elemental analysis showed that a maximum of 74.3% of carbon could be removed from the coked catalyst after 6.5 h. Moreover, the total specific surface area, the pore size distribution and the total pore volume (mainly mesopores) have been evaluated on coked and regenerated samples.