Ethene dimerization over Ni-beta catalysts prepared by solid-state ion exchange

Abstract

Owing to the environmental and technological problems of current commercial homogeneous organometallic catalysts, developing efficient heterogeneous catalysts for ethene dimerization is of industrial importance. Nickel-exchanged zeolite beta (Ni-beta) is a promising catalyst for this reaction due to its highly stable 1-butene yield. Here, we report that the Ni-beta catalyst shows a considerably better 1-butene yield when prepared by solid-state ion exchange compared to liquid-phase ion exchange and incipient wetness impregnation. A combination of CO IR, Ni K-edge X-ray absorption and UV-vis spectroscopies, and density functional theory calculations demonstrate that solid-state ion exchange is an efficient method to form the intrazeolitic mono(μ-oxo)dinickel ([Ni-O-Ni]