Selective nuclear hydrogenation of naphthalene, anthracene and coal-derived oil over Ru supported on mixed oxide Original Research Article

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the possible ways to produce high-quality products for transportation fuels from heavy distillates. For this purpose, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, and 1.0 wt% Ru, supported on three kinds of metallic oxide supports, Ru/Mn2O3ZnO, Ru/Mn2O3NiO and Ru/Mn2O3La2O3, were used as catalysts for selective nuclear hydrogenation of naphthalene, anthracene, and Canadian Battle River-coal-derived oil. The catalysts exhibited activity in the following order: Ru/Mn2O3NiO>Ru/Mn2O3ZnO>Ru/Mn2O3La2O3. The Ru/Mn2O3NiO catalyst showed the lowest exothermic temperature, corresponding to a decrease of differential pressure of hydrogen observed in the high-pressure DTA, and gave the largest H/Ru values among the catalysts determined by hydrogen chemisorption. The Ru/Mn2O3(0.19)NiO(0.81) among them showed the best performance for the reaction; it yielded 33 mol% of decalins from naphthalene and 49 mol% of perhydroanthracene from anthracene. The catalyst also converted 59 mol% of aromatic hydrogen to hydrogen at β- and γ-positions of aromatic hydrocarbons in the coal liquid. The temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) spectra of hydrogen and ammonia on the catalysts were measured to find the influence of acidity of supports for the catalytic activity. It was concluded that Ru on nonacidic support, which is Mn2O3NiO, showed the best performance, and a 0.1 wt% Ru loading on the Mn2O3NiO was sufficiently effective for the selective nuclear hydrogenation.