Enhancing the side-chain alkylation of toluene with methanol to styrene over the Cs-modified X zeolite by the assistance of basic picoline as a co-catalyst

Side-chain alkylation of toluene with methanol is a green pathway to realize the one-step production of styrene under mild conditions, but the low selectivity of styrene is difficult to be improved with by-products of ethylbenzene and xylene. In this study, a new way is introduced to improve the catalytic performance by means of assisting basic compounds as co-catalysts during the toluene side-chain alkylation with methanol to styrene. As a result, high activity of side-chain alkylation appears over the basic Cs-modified zeolite catalysts prepared by ion exchange and impregnation methods. This high performance should be mainly attributed to two co-catalysis actions: (1) the promotion of basic compounds for methanol dehydrogenation to formaldehyde as the intermediate for side-chain alkylation; (2) the suppression of the styrene transfer hydrogenation on basic Cs-modified zeolites to avoid the formation of ethylbenzene. Especially for Cs2O/CsX-ex catalyst, the addition of 2% mol/mol 2-picoline in reaction mixture could achieve both 12.3% toluene conversion and 84.1% styrene selectivity. Whereas the higher concentration of 2-picoline (>6% mol/mol) caused an inhibition to the catalytic activity because the excessive basic compound poisoned the combined acid-base pathway required for the side-chain alkylation process. In addition, two possible side-chain alkylation reaction routes on Cs-modified zeolite under the different 2-picoline absorption were described. (c) 2021 Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.