Highly Dispersed Low-Polymeric VOx/Silica Gel Catalyst for Efficient Catalytic Dehydrogenation of Propane to Propylene

Developing an efficient propane dehydrogenation (PDH) is a profound challenge for the production of propylene from the abundant source of propane in the chemical industry. In this work, a simple, efficient, and easy-to-operate process for highly selective PDH to propylene over low-polymeric VOx/silica gel (VOx/SG) catalyst has been successfully developed. The results demonstrate that the low-polymeric VOx/SG catalyst exhibits high selectivity (∼95%), good conversion (45.0 to 26.4% over 10 h test), and excellent regenerability in the PDH to propylene at 580 °C. The characterization results reveal that the low-polymeric VOx species are highly dispersed on the SG support, which contributes to prevent the coke formation and improve the stability of catalyst in PDH process. The highly dispersed low-polymeric VOx/SG catalyst for highly selective PDH to propylene is promising, because of the relatively superior activity and stable performance upon regeneration, and has important industrial application prospects.