Oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane over BaF2single bondLaOF catalysts Original Research Article

The oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane was investigated on LaOF and BaF2single bondLaOF catalysts. It was found that BaF2single bondLaOF was more effective than LaOF for the catalytic conversion of ethane to ethylene. A selectivity of 74% for ethylene was obtained at 55% ethane conversion over 8mol-%BaF2single bondLaOF compared with a selectivity of 58.5% for ethylene at 44.6% ethane conversion over LaOF under the same conditions: reaction temperature 660°C, C2H6:O2=67.7:32.3 and a feed gas flow-rate of 90 ml/min. It was also found that part of the ethylene in the products was produced by the thermal cracking of ethane. X-ray diffraction results showed that, when the molar percentage of BaF2 in BaF2single bondLaOF was less than 18%, only tetragonal LaOF was observed, and when the molar percent of BaF2 in BaF2single bondLaOF increased from 18% to 50%, tetragonal LaOF and lattice-contracted BaF2 were observed.