Structural study of deactivation of gallosilicate catalysts

Gallosilicate molecular sieves with an MFI structure are very promising catalysts for upgrading light olefins and paraffins to aromatics. Gallosilicate catalysts are quite stable at low reaction temperature, however, when subjected to high temperature, gallosilicate catalysts deactivate rapidly. The activity and selectivity of these catalysts are greatly influenced by both framework and non-framework gallium. Although the framework gallium imparts acidity to the sieve, the nature of the non-framework gallium is unclear. In the present study, combined techniques of analytical electron microscopy (AEM), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HREM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) have been applied to study the fate of framework and non-framework gallium in progressively deactivated gallosilicate molecular sieve catalysts. To study this progressive process, fresh gallosilicate molecular sieve and the gallosilicate catalysts (with 40% Cab-O-Sil matrix) subjected to steaming treatments at different temperatures and durations were characterized.The microstructure of fresh gallosilicate catalysts consists of highly crystalline molecular sieve which is uniformly distributed in the amorphous supporting matrix (Fig. 1).