Contributions of Burtron H. Davis to Fischer–Tropsch Refining Catalysis: Dehydration as Applied to Processes for 1-Octene Production

The contributions of Burtron H. Davis to the understanding and description of alcohol dehydration over metal oxide catalysts, is discussed and applied to process improvement and process synthesis. Some of the key findings from his work are that the dehydration mechanism over metal oxides involves a concerted removal of OH and adjacent H, that weakly basic metal oxides are sensitive to the acidity of the H abstracted during dehydration, and that anti-Saytzeff elimination is possible with >80 % selectivity over weakly basic metal oxides (In₂O₃, Y₂O₃, ZrO₂, Eu₂O₃ and ThO₂). These findings were applied to show how the dehydration step of the industrial Fischer–Tropsch based process for 1-heptene to 1-octene conversion can be improved through the use of a weakly basic metal oxide catalyst with low hydration activity. New processes were also suggested for the production of 1-octene from more commonly available feed materials, such as the C₈ fraction of natural gas condensate and petroleum naphtha. These processes employed weakly basic metal oxide catalysts with high hydration activity.