• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.155-160
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• 2011

Dimethyl ether draws an attention as a green fuel in recent years. In this study, we investigated dehydration of methanol to produce DME using solid-acid catalysts, a series of zeolite. We found that ceria took a role of promoting the reaction conversion as well as selectivity of DME formation as a cocatalyst to the zeolite catalyst. We varied Si/Al ratio and ceria percentage on the surface of the catalyst to get high performance catalyst. ZSM5-30 with 5 wt% ceria on the surface was found to have excellent DME selectivity and to be little influenced by water content in methanol feed. We proposed a reaction model and obtained kinetic parameters for the DME formation using the catalyst based on experimental results using a microreactor.