Highly stable monolithic titanium silicalite-1 catalyst for 1-butene epoxidation

A monolithic titanium silicalite-1 (TS-1) catalyst was prepared by coating TS-1 onto a specially designed stainless-steel support. The catalyst was used in 1-butene epoxidation, a strong exothermic reaction, to produce butene oxide in a fixed-bed reactor. Compared with the traditional extruded TS-1, the monolithic catalyst demonstrates excellent catalytic stability and reusability. To understand the reason for this performance, heat conduction behaviors of the monolithic and extruded catalysts were studied and compared. This was accomplished by firstly developing a kinetic model to determine reaction kinetic parameters, and then simulating the temperature distribution within the reactor. It revealed a much lower temperature-rise over the monolithic catalyst than over the extruded catalyst. This study demonstrates that the stainless-steel support of the monolithic catalyst is effective in dissipating high reaction heat of 1-butene epoxidation, thus limits local temperature-rise within the reactor. This inhibits the formation of channel-blocking byproducts and improves the catalytic stability.