Re-dispersion of active Zn species on modified S-1 zeolite as an efficient catalyst for direct dehydrogenation of propane

Highly active and inexpensive catalysts for propane dehydrogenation (PDH) are required for largescale propylene production in industrial application. Compared to Pt- and Cr-based catalysts, Zn-based nanomaterial is a promising candidate due to its environmental friendliness and coking-resistant but remains a great challenge. In this study, we developed a novel multi-component structure consisting of low Pt and abundant active Zn species highly dispersed on Fe-doped S-1 zeolite as PDH catalyst. Specifically, Fe-doping in S-1 support provided anchoring sites for loading Zn species with uniform distribution. Moreover, the very small amount of Pt was applied as promoter, which is beneficial to achieve the re-dispersion of Zn species with the formation of Znδ+ and Zn2+ active sites. The resulting 0.05Pt5Zn1Fe@S-1 catalyst exhibited the outstanding performance (conversion of propane: 40%, selectivity of propylene: 85%, and yield of propylene: 31.39%) as well as satisfactory regeneration ability. This improvement can be ascribed to the synergistic coupling between Pt promoter and the highly dispersed Zn species on modified S-1 support. This study opens a new way to design efficient and stable dehydrogenation catalysts.