Molecular Catalytic Coal Liquid Conversion

In this Quarter, the research was focused continually on the two general tasks: Task 1, molecular organometallic catalysts for hydrogenation and Task 2, organic base catalysts for arene hydrogenation and the hydrotreating of the coal liquids. With regards to Task 1, the [ 1,5-HDRhCl] suffer catalyst system has been investigated in detail to improve its performance. In the presence of CTAB ([CTAB]/[Rh]=2.0), the stability of the catalyst was improved greatly. The relationship between the turnover number of the catalyst (the moles of hydrogenated substrate per mole of Rh catalyst) and the reaction time was obtained. After 8 days in which the same catalyst was used for 8 cycles, there was no decrease in catalytic activity. The turnover numbers of the catalyst increases linearly with the reaction time in this period and reaches about 1350. Other aromatic compounds such as toluene, n-butylbenzene, tetralin, 0xylene all can be hydrogenated into the corresponding substituted cyclohexane derivatives in more than 94% yields when catalyzed by [ 1,5-HDRhCl] 2 in the presence of small amount of surfactent molecules. The optimum catalyst system has been applied for the hydrogenation of tetralin in the presence of a coal liquid derived from the coal liquefaction. It was found that about 80-85% of tetralin in the mixture was hydrogenated to decalin under the conditions of these experiments. Task 2 was continually focused on the hydrogenation of coal liquids. Institution of dideuterium for dihydrogen in the hydrotreating of coal liquid at 250 OC and 10oO psig of dideuterium yielded a product that was characterized by 2H NMR. Two groups of deuteron located in the region of 6.5 8.0 ppm and 1.0 3.5 ppm, respectively, were observed. The former group was assigned to the deuterons on carbon atoms of aromatic rings and the latter to the deuterons linked to the aliphatic carbon atoms. In addition, naphthalene was hydrogenated completely to tetralin in the presence of the coal liquid under the same conditions, implying that the reduction of multiaromatic compounds was not adversely influenced by the existence of the coal liquid which contains potential catalyst poisons such as sulfur, nitrogen and oxygen.