Study on the dehydrogenation of perhydro-dibenzyltoluene catalyzed by Pt/Al₂O₃ in a fixed bed reactor

The dehydrogenation of perhydro-dibenzyltoluene (18H-DBT) is the key reaction in cyclic hydrogen storage, but it is usually investigated in batch reactors. In this work, the dehydrogenation reaction of 18H-DBT over Pt/Al2O3 was performed in a fixed-bed, and the effects of Pt loading and reaction conditions on dehydrogenation activity were investigated. The results show that increasing the Pt loading could increase the dehydrogenation rate; however, the average electron density of Pt will increase accordingly, resulting in more byproducts. Low pressure and high temperature can increase the dehydrogenation degree but produce undesired byproducts. Therefore, 0.5 MPa and 330 degrees C are the optimal reaction conditions. When the LHSV was increased to 10 mL/(g(cat).h), the hydrogen production capacity reached 14.8 mol(H2)/(g(Pt).h), which is much higher than the processing capacity of the reaction kettle in the literature. This result indicates that continuous reactions have positive significance in the large-scale application of 18H-DBT hydrogen production.