Synthesis of Titanium Oxide Catalyst with Gold Nanoparticle as a Dopant for Ethanol Dehydration Application

Designing specific method to investigate selective catalytic reaction of ethanol dehydration to produce diethy lether as a more valuable product is very challenging. In this study, four types of gold nano particles (AuNP) on TiO2 heterogeneous catalysts were prepared by hydrothermal (HT) and solvothermal (ST) methods, denoted as AuNP/TO-AHT; AuNP/TO-RHT; AuNP/TO-AST and AuNP/TO-RST(A = anatase and R = rutile phase). Further, their property of catalytic were investigated in terms of ethanol to diethyl ether conversion through dehydration reaction of ethanol. The catalyst product and diethyl ether (DEE) were then characterized to determine their characteristics and performance using FTIR, XRD, SEM and GCMS instruments. We discovered that the TO-HT revealed more amount of active acid positions and greater pore volume surface area than those of TO-ST. GCMS analysis showed that the highest transformation of ethanol to DEE was reached by the catalyst AuNP/TO-AHT (16.96%) followed by AuNP/TO-AST (0.97%), AuNP/TO-RHT (0.33%), and AuNP/TO-RST (0.07%).