Attrition resistant catalyst for dimethyl ether synthesis in fluidized-bed reactor

Fluidized-bed reactor is a candidate for dimethyl ether (DME) synthesis from syngas because of its excellent heat removal capability. In order to improve the attrition resistance of catalyst, an amount of silica sol as binder was added to the catalyst composed of methanol synthesis component CuO/ZnO/Al2O3 and methanol dehydration component HZSM-5, which was prepared by coprecipitation and shaped by spray drying to get spherical particles. The effect of silica sol on the catalytic activity was investigated in a fixed-bed flow microreactor. Based on the experiment results, silica sol in the range of 0~20wt% had small effect on the catalytic activity. Generally, the CO conversion and DME yield decreased with the increase in concen- tration of silica sol, while the attrition resistance of catalysts increased with increasing silica sol, indicating that it was feasible to improve the attrition resistance without greatly sacrificing the activity of catalyst. In addition, the characterizations of catalysts were carried out using Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and temperature programmed reduction (TPR).