Commercial Aluminum Hydroxides. Part II: Application of Aluminum Hydroxides in a Catalytic Acid-Type Reaction and Effect of a Peptizing Agent

Abstract The development of catalytic systems always requires many fundamental and empirical studies. If a work is aimed at industrial implementation, the tasks include studying the properties of industrial large-tonnage raw materials, and the work is complicated by the need to adapt them to the technology being developed. This report compares the structural characteristics and elemental composition of some commercial aluminum hydroxides and the physicochemical characteristics of metastable aluminum oxides synthesized from them. The performance characteristics of aluminum oxide catalysts were studied on laboratory testbenches in the skeletal isomerization reaction of n-butylenes. It was established that, in contrast to textural characteristics, impurities ions influence to greater extent on the catalytic properties of samples. The effect of peptizers, orthophosphoric, and citric acids on the properties of acid-type catalysts was studied for the first time. It was demonstrated for the first time that, despite an increase in the concentration of acid sites on the surface of aluminum oxide synthesized with orthophosphoric acid, its catalytic activity is several times lower than that of the catalyst, which was preliminary peptized with citric acid and characterized by a lower concentration of acid sites.