Acid-base interaction between C8 aromatics and X and Y zeolites

Abstract

In this work, C8 aromatics adsorption in liquid phase on X and Y zeolites was investigated. To study effects of acid-base interaction between the aromatics and the zeolites, a series of both zeolites with differenct exchanged cations, Cs, Rb, K, Na and Li, was used as adsorbents p-Xylene, having the weakest basicity of the aromatics, was expected to have increased selectivity with decreasing zeolite acidity. However, the results showed that the acid-base interaction could not b used to explain the adsorption behavior for all cations studied. The effects of cation size and zeolite type must also be taken into account. Here, KY had high p-xylene selectivity, which could be obtained from either the dynamic adsorption or equilibrium adsorption experiments. Moreover, p-xylene selectivity as hardly changed by the components' concentrations in the feed.