Crystallite Size Effect in the Selective Oxidation of Butene to Butadiene on Iron Oxide. 2. Reaction Studies

Article abstract of DOI:10.1021/j150656a020

A selective oxidation of 1-butene to butadiene was studied over a series of silica-supported and unsupported iron oxide catalysts of average crystallize sizes ranging from 2.5 to 61 nm.The reaction was studied at 300, 350, and 375 deg C under conditions that resulted in low conversions.The selectivity for butadiene ranged from about 80percent to below 50percent.In general, it was higher for catalysts of smaller crystallite sizes and lower for larger crystallize sizes.The areal rate appeared to have a small dependence on the crystallite size.However, this trend could be due to the fact that the iron oxide surface areas were calculated by using the average crystallite sizes, which did not properly account for the different crystallite size distributions.Possible ecplanations for the variation of selectivity with crystallize sizes were discussed.