CSIR-IIP develops nano-catalysts for manufacturing petrochemicals

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research - Indian Institute of Petroleum (CSIR-IIP) has developed new energy efficient synthesis strategies for preparation of various nano structured material (nano-catalysts), which are useful for several challenging catalysis reactions.
 
It developed nano-catalyst for selective oxidation of benzene to phenol. CSIR-IIP, using an environmentally benign green process with economic efficiency, has developed a nano catalyst, which directly converts benzene to phenol in presence of air in a continuous process with very high selectivity. The industrial demand for phenol is increasing every year, and its production currently exceeds 8.0 megatons per year. The existing three-step process for production of phenol, called the cumene process, is energy-consuming, environmentally unfavourable, and disadvantageous for practical operation. This process also produces unnecessary by- products, such as acetone and α-methyl styrene. The new catalysis will help in avoiding such lesser efficient reactions
 
CSI-IIP has also developed nano catalyst which helps in adopting a new process of selective oxidation of propylene to propylene oxide (PO), in an economically viable and more environment-friendly means, with minimal waste. Propylene oxide otherwise is an important synthetic intermediate used in the preparation of commodity chemicals, such as polyurethane foams, propylene glycol, polypropylene glycol, propylene carbonate, etc, and currently, its production exceeds 10 million tons per annum. Ninety per cent of the world production of PO is produced either through a chlorohydrins process or by an organic hydro peroxide process (Halcon method), which apart from having acute environmental problems also results in production of unwanted by-products.
 
In addition, CSIR-IIP has developed another nano catalyst for low temperature methane activation. Methane is the most abundant and the least reactive of the hydrocarbon family, thus the activation of methane at low temperatures is one of the most challenging problems with great practical importance. “The CSIR-IIP developed nano catalyst can activate methane at low temperature at atmospheric pressure without any deactivation. This also helps in reducing carbon dioxide, another notorious greenhouse gas to produce synthesis gas (mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen),” said CSIR in a press release.
 
In another development, CSIR-IIP has developed nano catalyst to convert ethane to ethylene in a continuous process at atmospheric pressure. Ethylene is one of the main building block in petrochemical industry and used as a feedstock for numerous processes like manufacture of mustard gas, ethylene oxide, ethylene alcohol, polyethylene and other plastics; and as an inhalation anaesthetic. Global ethylene production capacity is 155.9 million tonnes.