D. Parra et al., CATALYTIC ACTIVITY AND DEACTIVATION OF ACIDIC ION-EXCHANGE RESINS IN METHYL TERT-BUTYL ETHER LIQUID-PHASE SYNTHESIS, Industrial & engineering chemistry research, 37(9), 1998, pp. 3575-3581
This paper presents a comparative study of catalytic activity of 12 di
fferent styrene-divinylbenzene ion-exchange resins as catalysts for MT
BE (methyl tert-butyl ether) liquid-phase synthesis. Experiments were
carried out at 1.6 MPa and 323 K using a stationary fixed-bed fed with
methanol and C-4 olefinic cut as the source of isobutylene. The isobu
tylene/methanol molar ratio studied was 0.91 and the LHSV employed in
the continuous operation was 85 h(-1). Experimental data show that ion
exchangers with higher acidic capacity were the most active ones. It
seems that this parameter plays the greatest influence on the catalyti
c activity for MTBE synthesis whereas other properties such as surface
area and average pore diameter hardly influence it.