Influence of spray drying temperature on performance of CuO/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst for methanol synthesis in slurry reactor

The influence of the spray drying temperature on the performance of the CuO/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst used for methanol synthesis is studied in a slurry reactor. The results show that the spray drying temperature lower or higher than 225°C will lead the precursor to water residual or crystallinity degree higher than optimum respectively, which will disadvantage the performance of the catalyst. The performance of the catalyst that spray dried at 225°C is optimal, and its space time yield and deactivation rate reach to 166.7 g·(kg cat) -1·h-1 and 0.16% ·d-1 respectively. The space time yield is equivalent to the catalyst that conventional dried[172.2 g·(kg cat) -1·h-1, 0.43%·d-1], but its stability is improved much. The characterization of the catalysts and precursors indicates that the structure data of the catalyst spray and conventional dried, such as mean diameter of CuO crystallite, specific surface area and hole diameter distribution between 5.8-20 nm, are mainly equivalent with each other. The only difference is that the catalyst particle that spray dried presents homogeneous sphere with mean diameter about 70 μm, while the conventional dried presents irregular shapes with mean diameter about 120 μm. © All Rights Reserved.