Utilization of Fly Ash As Catalyst for Cracking and Alkylation: Synthesis and Characterization of Zeolite from Fly Ash for Cracking of N-heptane and Alkylation of Phenol

Fly ash has been converted to zeolite using alkali fusion followed by hydrothermal treatment. The synthesis conditions were optimized to obtain highest conversion of fly ash to X-type zeolite. The prepared catalyst has demonstrated good efficiency in catalytic cracking of pure components, like n-Heptane, as well as heavy gas oil. The cracking activity of synthesized catalyst showed comparable activity with 13X zeolite and FCC catalyst collected from Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd., India. The activity of the synthesized catalyst has been tested for lkylation of phenol. The prepared catalyst has been found to be superior to the commercially available catalyst like 13X and H-Beta. The cracking and alkylation reactions were carried out in a fixed bed down flow reactor and also in batch reactor. Kinetic models were developed for both for cracking and alkylation reactions and kinetic parameters and adsorption constants were estimated using a non-linear regression algorithm. The outcome of the present study is very much promising in utilizing a waste material into a commercial commodity and also to protect environmental pollution to some extent.