Continuous catalytic pyrolysis of waste oil to aromatics: Exploring the structure-performance relations of ZSM-5 based on different scale-up forms

Waste oil, a byproduct of oil industry, holds significant potential to valuable aromatics through catalytic pyrolysis. However, there is a lack of research on catalysts suitable for large-scale production, which requires scaling up powder catalysts to meet industrial requirements. In this study, structure-performance relations of four different scale-up ZSM-5 in waste oil catalytic pyrolysis to aromatics was evaluated in a continuous system. Notably, ZSM-5/SiC ceramic foam catalyst exhibited the smallest pressure loss across the catalytic reactor, which was 6 times lower compared to the powder catalysts. ZSM-5/SiC ceramic foam catalyst has excellent initial activity, maintaining aromatics selectivity above 99% for the first 30 min time-on-stream and retaining 73.63% selectivity after 1 h. The pelletized ZSM-5 showed the longest lifetime during six reaction-regeneration cycles. The deactivation mechanism of ZSM-5 was deduced. This study helps to better understand the process at the molecular level and also contribute to research in large-scale production.