Oxidative dehydrogenation of propane using lattice oxygen of vanadium oxides on silica

Oxidative dehydrogenation of propane using lattice oxygen of vanadium oxide was carried out with a fix-bed flow reactor at 450 °C under atmospheric pressure. Vanadium oxide loaded on SiO2 from V(t-BuO)3O afforded a high propylene selectivity of 88.3% with a propane conversion of 26.5% based on the lattice oxygen of vanadium oxide. The catalyst prepared with V(t-BuO)3O exhibited higher propane conversion and propylene selectivity than that prepared with NH4VO3. Raman, XPS, and XRD analyses revealed that isolated VO43− species seem to be active sites in the ODHP. For the dehydrogenation of propane, the lattice oxygen of the isolated VO43− species was used to give propylene and H2O. The isolated VO43− species was reduced to the isolated V3+ species and was regenerated by oxidation with oxygen. The activity was maintained for at least 10 repeated cycles, suggesting that VOx/SiO2 would be a promising catalyst for ODHP.