Effect of Reaction Conditions on Hydroisomerization of n-Pentane over Pt/ZSM-5 Nanocatalyst

The effect of operating conditions such as temperature, pressure, and H2/nC5 molar ratio on the hydroisomerization of n-pentane over Pt/ZSM-5 was investigated. It was found that, because of increasing the cracking reactions, by increasing temperature the n-pentane conversion was incremented, but the selectivity towards iso-pentane was decreased. Furthermore, an increase in pressure had a desirable influence on the n-pentane conversion and iso-pentane selectivity. The other important parameter studied in the current work is H2/nC5 molar ratio. The results showed that at the low ratios of H2/nC5, conversion was decreased with increasing this ratio, since the active sites was occupied with hydrogen. On the other hand, the hydrogenation of surface alkanes resulted in decreasing the cracking reactions and consequently increasing the selectivity towards iso-pentane. At the higher ratios of H2/nC5, increasing hydrogen amount had no effect on the selectivity and led to a low decrease in the n-pentane conversion.