Characterization of Acid-Base Catalysts by Calorimetric Titration I. Correlation with Alcohol Dehydration Activity

Abstract

Several commercial aluminas, silica-aluminas and clays are characterized by calorimetric titration with n-butylamine and trichloroacetic acid. The heat of adsorption distributions obtained by titration are found to be sufficient measures of surface acidity and basicity in correlating catalyst activity towards alcohol dehydration. A correlation is obtained by dividing the distributions into groups of suitable acidic and basic site pairs, and assigning to each group a specific reaction rate by least-squares fitting with the observed rates of dehydration. The correlation describes well both olefin and ether formation and provides support for a reaction mechanism proposed in the literature.

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