Research Projects

Rice and wheat are staple foods in our country, providing a route for surplus production of ethanol. Ethanol can also be used as a feedstock for producing C3-C4 olefins, which can be used for synthesizing petrochemicals. C3-C4 Olefin synthesis from ethanol (ETO) is an emerging field of research, with zeolite-based and transition metal oxide-based catalysts being active for ETO. Zeolite-based catalysts are mostly noble metal-based with impregnation and ion exchange of metals like Mg, Ca, Ba, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni Cu, Zn, Ga, Ce, Ag, Pd, Bi, Ti, V, Zr, Mo, W. Transition metal oxides have been shown to have higher selectivity for propylene and isobutylene, particularly cerium, indium, zirconium, titanium, and yttrium. Ionic catalysts, which have been studied extensively for greenhouse gas abatement, hydrogen generation, and reforming reactions, have been scarce and limited for olefin synthesis. This project aims to bridge this gap by developing ionic catalysts for olefin synthesis using ethanol as feedstock. The advantage of these materials is that substitution, or doping aliovalent metal ions in a support base oxide, retains the parent structure and synthesis of single phase oxide dopant metals dispersed as ions in solid solutions of base metals. Ion substituted metal oxides/base metal oxides-of transition metal oxides such as ZrO2, CeO2, ZnO, In2O3, and Y2O3 will be synthesized using either solution combustion synthesis or sonochemical methods. The catalytic activity of synthesized catalytic materials for C3-C4 olefin using ethanol as feed will be carried out using a fixed bed reactor.