Indian Institute of Technology - Kanpur

Assignment 2
on

Dehydration of Ethyl Alcohol using Al2O3

Under the Subject of

Principles of Heterogeneous Catalysis (CHE 633 A)

Department: - M-Tech Chemical Engineering

SUBMITTED BY :-

SR.NO NAME ROLL NO

1 ADITYA CHOUMAL 22102007
2 ABHIMANYU SINGH 22102004
3 SARVESH CHAURASIYA 22102049

PROFESSOR GOUTAM DEO

(Faculty Guide)

Academic Year (2022-23)

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 1. Historical perspective of the reaction: - The first ever reported literature on
catalytic dehydration of ethanol to ethylene was published on 1726, but on a large
industrial scale it was procured in 20th century. Mostly in industries there are 2
significant methodologies incorporated that are route through phosphoric acid and
rout through alumina. Though phosphoric acid route was predominant earlier,
alumina one became important latter.
2. Importance of the reaction:- This was first carried out by steam reforming of
naphtha but then dehydration of ethanol was found to be a suitable route, the only
constraint was the cost in the dehydration method was multifold compared to steam
reforming. But this methodologies gave an alternative route and decreased our
dependency on fossil fuel. In the latter era production capacity of ethylene
determined the economic power of a country, as it is a primary component of many
plastics, and surfactant chemicals, and is the largest in terms of volume of a
petrochemical to be produced.
3. The catalyst used for the reaction: - The catalyst used is activated alumina
powdered catalyst (Al2O3), which is highly stable and produces high purity
ethylene. Being an endothermic reaction, the reaction temperatures, are quite high
and this catalyst proves to be quite effective at high temperatures.
Alumina (Al2O3) is an industrially relevant solid catalyst because of its high surface
area (50−300 m2 g−1) and thermal stability up to 873 K. The water removal process
from alcohol occurs over alumina to form either olefins or ethers through
unimolecular or bimolecular pathways, respectively; both of these routes give water
as an alternative. The surface of Al2O3 contains hydroxyl groups, Lewis acid sites
in the form of surface aluminum (Al) atoms, as well as surface oxygen (O) atoms
capable of behaving as basic sites, thus this dual nature helps in better selectivity as
a catalyst for many reactions.

Figure 2:- Reaction mechanism of Al2O3

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 4. Operating Conditions for the reaction: - The reaction is an endothermic reaction and occurs best

at 300 ˚C - 500˚C, at 0.1 to 0.2 MPa, with space velocity of 0.1-1 h-1, the yield of ethylene

obtained is about 94-99 %. Majorly fixed bed reactors are used, but recently fluidised bed reactors

are also incorporated for the same. The major influencing factors for the reactions are pressure,

temperature and initial water content of the raw material. These will influence

C2H5OH

C2H5OC2H5 C2H4

Where will our reaction proceed and which reaction mass will be found in the major amount.

5. Flowsheet and brief explanation:-

Figure 1 reference: - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ie401157c

This majorly consists of two parts one is ethylene formation and the nest is washing and

purification of ethylene from its by-products formed. Here the feed bio-ethanol is sent to the

preheater and then to the subsequent reactor, it is then washed with water and alkaline solutions to

remove light end by-products, and heavy end by-products, it is then dried in the drying tower and

Ethylene is obtained as an overhead stream of the Heavy-Ends tower. The catalyst majorly used

here is Al2O3.

6. References:-

a) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cben.201600025

b) https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ie401157c

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