Hydrogenation of commercial polystyrene over Pd/BaSO₄ catalysts: Effect of carrier structure

Abstract

A variety of barium sulfate (BaSO₄) carriers with or without mesopore structure were synthesized via precipitation reaction in aqueous solution of barium hydroxide and sulfuric acid with ethylene glycol as a modifying agent, and then calcined at various temperatures. The obtained BaSO₄ was used as catalyst carriers for polystyrene (PS) hydrogenation, and BaSO₄ supported palladium (Pd) catalysts with Pd content of 5wt% were prepared by using impregnation method. N₂ physisorption, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and kinetics studies were used to investigate the effect of carrier structure on the dispersion and geometric location of active metal and their catalytic activities in PS hydrogenation. It was found that the pore structure of carrier played an important role in the dispersion and location of Pd grains. The activation energy values for all the Pd/BaSO₄ catalysts were around 49.1 kJ/mol, while the pre-exponential factor for Pd/BSC-6H was much higher than others. The Pd/BSC-6H without mesopores had Pd grains deposited on the external surface of the carrier, and exhibited better activity than the mesoporous catalysts. It is indicated that the utilization of Pd/BSC-6H can reduce the pore diffusion of PS coils and enabled more active sites to participate in the PS hydrogenation.

Keywords

polystyrene hydrogenation / carrier structure / supported catalyst

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