Studies of the Stability of Catalysts for Oxidative Chlorination of Methane

Abstract

The studies were focused on the influence of various factors on the stability of catalysts for oxidative chlorination of methane due to evolution of the active catalyst components (copper chlorides). The volatility of copper chlorides was shown to depend mainly on the catalyst composition and temperature. When the average temperature in the reactor was 350 °C, 0,45 % and 0,72 % of copper chlorides escaped, respectively, the catalyst containing copper and nickel oxides and the catalyst containing lanthanum chloride as the activating impurity after 5 hours. Another way to improve the catalyst stability, apart from diminishing the copper chloride volatility, is to feed hydrogen chloride bearing copper chloride solutes isolated from the outlet reaction gas in order to abstract the reaction heat and to feed back the unreacted hydrogen chloride.