Tuning 1,3-Butadiene selectivity from ethanol in a tandem reaction with induction heating

• Using IH in the ETB reaction enables two temperature zones inside one reactor. • IH enables an ethanol conversion rate of 62.9% and C4 olefins selectivity of 55.3%. • IH allows for low power consumption and high production efficiency. The Ostromislensky process is a two-step reaction to produce 1,3-butadiene (1,3-BD) from ethanol. Initially, ethanol undergoes dehydrogenation to form acetaldehyde, which is used to produce 1,3-BD by reacting with more ethanol. However, the different temperature and catalyst requirements for each step make it inefficient to use a single reactor with conventional furnace heating for 1,3-BD production. To overcome this challenge, we propose the use of induction heating (IH) and adjusting the amount of the susceptors to create separate reaction temperature zones within a single reactor. This allows for the efficient implementation of the two-step reactions in a tandem system, thereby increasing selectivity towards the desired products. In this work, we investigated the Ostromislensky process for the ethanol-to-butadiene (ETB) reaction using IH in a tandem system. We achieved tunable C4 selectivity by individually controlling the reaction temperature and weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) of each catalyst bed. Operating the catalyst beds at 171 °C and 320 °C, we achieved an ethanol conversion of 62.9% and C4 selectivity of 55.3% over a commercial Cu catalyst for bed 1 and a ZrO 2 /SiO 2 catalyst for bed 2 at a WHSV of 0.6 h −1 . At the same space velocity, the ethanol conversion and C4 selectivity of 52% and 44.9% were achieved, respectively, using the benchmark Ag/ZrO 2 /SBA-16 catalyst, indicating that the IH can improve the catalyst behavior under lower reaction temperatures. Our findings suggest that the implementation of IH in a tandem system can effectively establish dual temperature zones inside a single reactor, improving production efficiency for a multi-step reaction.