Investigation of Industrial Process to Produce Cyclopentanone by Dehydrogenation of Cyclopentanol Using Copper-Zinc Catalyst

The catalytic performance of Cu based oxide composites to the dehydrogenation of cyclopentanol was investigated in detail to develop the commercial production process of cyclopentanone (CPN). Among the composites examined in this study, Cu-Zn composite where the ratio of Cu/Zn is 1.12 exhibited high catalytic performance in not only the activity but also the selectivity. Particularly, the Cu-Zn catalyst applying without any pretreatment showed higher catalytic performance to the reaction than the catalyst applying with the pretreatment of H2 reduction, where the performance achieved the target level of the production process. From the result of continuous operation for 300 h, the induction period for 50 h was confirmed. Under the induction period, it was confirmed that the catalyst was activated accompanied with suppressing side reaction, mainly the aldol condensation of CPN. Here, the bench scale operation was also performed with using the Cu-Zn catalyst and the catalyst was confirmed to be applicable to the cyclopentanone production process from cyclopentanol. The active state of the Cu-Zn catalyst was discussed.