The possibility of supercritical fluid regeneration for Pt-Re/γ-Al2O3 industrial reforming catalyst in O3/CO2 mixtures

This work continues a cycle of studies aimed at developing new approaches to the regeneration of coked bimetallic heterogeneous catalysts. The activities of three Ru-125 (Pt-Re/γ-Al2O3) industrial reforming catalyst samples (fresh catalyst (A), catalyst removed from an industrial reactor (B), and sample B after treating it with ozone in supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) (C)) are been compared in the reforming of n-heptane. It is established that sample B is deactivated appreciably: the conversion of n-heptane and the yield of reforming products are generally much lower than on the fresh catalyst. After treating it with an O3/SC-CO2 mixture, the conversion of n-heptane not only returns to the level of fresh sample A, but also exceeds it by a factor of 1.2. The qualitative composition of the products obtained on samples A, B, and C is nearly the same, but there are some changes in the quantitative ratio of certain products. Regeneration with ozone is found to be promising for further development and scaling.