Pathways of Butyl Alcohol Dehydration

Note that, at steady-state, the dehydration kinetics were always zero-order with respect to alcohol in the feeding flow, signifying that, under these conditions, only a very small fraction of the active sites are free. As schematized in 

A - alcohol, E - ether, W - water, B - butene or other olefin. E + W, 

KIRIL ILYCH ZAMARAEV AND JOHN MEURIG THOMAS 

The amounts of these species were estimated from the transient kinetics in purging experiments. Thus, for isobutyl alcohol in both HZSM-5 and AAS, the 

The overall reaction scheme for dehydration is identical for all butyl alcohols and for both our catalysts, but the relative amounts of various reaction intermediates and the relative values of the rate coefficients for various reaction steps can be dramatically different. Thus, for a given temperature and given catalyst loading in the reactor, and for a given gas-flow rate through the reactor and concentration of butyl alcohol in the gas flow, the observed reaction rates and selectivities with respect to various reaction products can be crucially different for different butyl alcohols and different catalysts (i.e., crystalline HZSM-5 or AAS). 

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