Hydrocracking-hydroisomerization of n-decane on amorphous silica-alumina with uniform pore diameter

The properties of a bi-functional catalyst based on a new amorphous mesoporous silica-alumina (MSA) exhibiting a very narrow pore size distribution has been studied for the n-decane hydroisomerization-hydrocracking reaction. The hydrogenation-dehydrogenation function has been provided by supporting platinum on the MSA surface. The amount and the dispersion of platinum in Pt/MSA catalysts were optimized to provide pure bi-functional behavior. The activity of final catalysts was compared with that of a commercial silica-alumina (Crossfield) and three USY zeolites (PQ Corp.) having different framework Si Al ratios. The observed differences have been discussed and hypothesis based on differences in acid properties and porosity have been proposed in this paper. A study of the product distribution based on different criteria used in the n-decane reaction test allowed to exclude the presence of ZSM-5 domains in the structure of the precursor MSA mesoporous material.