Improvement of the octane number of petroleum naphtha using a molten salt based thermo-catalytic process

• Innovative process to improve the octane number of naphtha. • Increase octane number by using molten salt thermo-catalytic process. • 50 % octane number enhancement through yield increase of isoparaffins and aromatics. This work shows that the molten salt-based catalysts NaCl-AlCl 3 and NaCl-ZnCl 2 are suitable for octane number enhancement. Their effectiveness has been demonstrated based on a set of series of reactions. Indeed, this molten salt based thermo-catalytic process involves the reconstruction of low octane hydrocarbons in naphtha into more valuable high-octane gasoline components. Besides, the molten salt composition has an impact on both quantitative and qualitative composition of products. The classification of the activity for the binary eutectic salts used in this process is: NaCl-ZnCl 2 > NaCl-AlCl 3 . The octane number was improved from 60 to 93 points mainly due to an increase in the yield of isoparaffins and aromatics. We demonstrated that this process is very promising as replacement of conventional and cost intensive platin-based catalysts for the octane boosting.