Abstract
As the petroleum reserves became scarce and oil prices rise, the use of cheap C1 raw materials such as methane or coal as energy source or feedstock for petrochemical industry via the methanol route, i.e. the so called methanol economy, has received much attention. The competitiveness of conversion of methanol to light olefins (MTO) has been demonstrated commercially. The conversion of methanol to light aromatics (MTA) such as benzene, toluene and xylenes (BTX) has yet to be fully commercialized. There are many studies on catalysis, kinetic modelling and reactor design on MTO. The mechanism of MTA has yet to be fully understood and there is relatively few models on MTA. In this study, we built MTH model (Mihail et al. 1983) and try to combine reactions found in the literature in order to build the dual cycle mechanism. We attempt to use this integrating model to compare the result of experiment from our lab. By adjusting the model’s kinetic parameters, we can get the similar result with experiment. We can use the model as base to adjust each experiment and understand the interaction of catalyst and reactions.