Synthesis and applications of mesoporous Cu-Zn-Al2O3 catalyst for dehydrogenation of 2-butanol

A series of mesoporous Cu-Zn-Al₂O₃ materials have been synthesized at ambient temperature and their structure was characterized by XRD, N₂ physical adsorption and TPR techniques. Their catalytic applications for the dehydrogenation of 2-butanol to methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) were evaluated in a fixed-bed flow reactor at atmospheric pressure. It is demonstrated from the XRD patterns that both the as-synthesized samples and calcined samples have the typical XRD patterns of meso-structured materials and the results of N₂O chemical adsorption showed that Cu was embedded in the framework of the mesoporous materials and homogeneously dispersed in the mesoporous Cu-Zn-Al₂O₃ materials. The catalytic activity of 2-butanol dehydrogenation was varied in the order of CZA(10)