Iron Oxide Catalysts for Dehydrogenation of Ethylbenzene in the Presence of Steam

Catalyst research for ethylbenzene (EB) dehydrogenation has been interest to many chemical manufacturers because styrene monomer is such a large-volume chemical and a steady growth of styrene markets is predicted. EB is relatively easy to dehydrogenate and the reaction may be effected by a simple thermal gas-phase process as observed by Berthelot in 1869 [l]. However, a much higher selectivity to styrene is obtained by contact catalysts. The historical evolution of EB dehydrogenation processes has been summarized by Kearby [21 and others [3].