Enhanced methanol to gasoline performance using nanosheet-like SAPO-11 catalyst

Herein, spherical and nanosheet-like SAPO-11s were successfully synthesized hydrothermally and utilized to catalyze the methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) process. The nanosheet-like SAPO-11 (SAPO-11-A) had a thickness of about 10 nm, while the spherical SAPO-11 (SAPO-11-B) had a particle size of around 11 μm. Compared to SAPO-11-B, the property of SAPO-11-A was enhanced by 42.9% in specific surface area (SSA), 38.1% in mesopore volume (V me ) and 20.2% in acid amounts, respectively. In terms of catalytic performance during the MTG reaction, SAPO-11-A demonstrated superior results not only in the methanol conversion (95.82%), gasoline-range hydrocarbons selectivity (58.76%) and iso/nparaffin ratio (8.17) but also in suppressed coke deposition (2.56%) compared with those (90.63%, 50.95%, 4.75 and 5.73%, respectively) of SAPO-11-B. Additionally, the optimal MTG process conditions were identified utilizing SAPO-11-A, demonstrating a methanol conversion rate of 98.34%, a gasoline hydrocarbon selectivity of 67.61%, an isoparaffin selectivity of 36.01% and an iso/nparaffin ratio of 10.94 at 380 °C, weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) of 2 h −1 and 1 MPa. These results highlight the potential of nanosheet SAPO-11 to produce gasoline-range hydrocarbons rich in isoparaffins.