Simultaneous deactivation by coke and sulfur of bimetallic Pt–Re(Ge, Sn)/Al2O3 catalysts for n-hexane reforming Original Research Article

The simultaneous deactivation by coke and sulfur of monometallic Pt/Al2O3 and bimetallic Pt–Re(Ge, Sn)/Al2O3 catalysts was studied using n-hexane reforming as bifunctional test reaction and thiophene as poisoning molecule. The residual activities in the activity decay curves were used for measuring the catalyst sensitivity to coke formation and sulfur poisoning. Sulfur and carbonaceous deposits accumulated essentially on the metallic fraction and affected the catalyst activity for both monofunctional metallic and bifunctional metal–acid catalyzed reactions. The overall deactivation rate for n-hexane conversion increased in the order Pt–Ge