1-butanol dehydration and dehydrogenation over vanadium aluminium oxynitride catalysts

Amorphous high surface area vanadium aluminium oxynitrides (VAlON) are prepared by nitridation of vanadium aluminium oxide precursors. The acid-base and redox properties of VAlON depend on their nitrogen content, as well as on the V/Al ratio of the reactive precursor. The influence of these parameters over the catalytic properties of VAlON for 1-butanol dehydration/dehydrogenation was studied. For the studied samples, the only detected products were 1-butene, butane and butanal. The presence of butane as a major product could be explained by a hydrogen transfer mechanism.