Synthesis of Pure Butene-1 through Hydro-isomerization of Butene-2 and Distillation

It is necessary to convert butene-2 into butene-1 with higher added-values through positional isomerization. In this study, hydro-isomerization of butene-2 with hydrogen over Pd/alumina catalysts was investigated in a fixed bed reactor. The yield of butene-1 over Ld-265 catalyst was higher than that over other catalysts. The yield of butene-1 was highest (5.3%) under the conditions of reaction temperature of 75 ℃, reaction pressure of 150 psig, 2-butene flow rate of 48 cc/h and hydrogen flow rate of 3 cc/min. We conducted simulation for the process composed of a hydroisomerization reactor and a distillation tower. In the case of 78% of tray efficiency, we obtained over 99% pure butene-1 through a distillation tower with 171 steps (R=120).