Predicting Catalytic Performance of Micro-Mesoporous Pt/Beta-KIT-6 Catalyst in n-Heptane Hydroisomerization Using Indexed Isomerization Factor and Experimental Verification

A Beta-KIT-6 (BK) micro-mesoporous composite material was assembled using zeolite Beta seed solution as raw material. BK composite contained both zeolite Beta units and three-dimensional cubic Ia3d mesostructure of KIT-6, which served as a catalyst support for hydroisomerization of n-heptane. The composite was characterized by a variety of techniques. Results show that catalyst Pt/HBK using the composite as the support exhibited the highest isoheptanes yield among all catalysts, which is attributed to both appropriate surface acidity and excellent mass transfer properties of Beta-KIT-6 composite. Experimental results verified that the indexed isomerization factor as a general performance descriptor could accurately predict the hydroisomerization performance of support materials.