4. Catalytic reforming reaction diagrams

Considering the number of reactions involved in catalytic reforming, it's easy to see why it's impossible to establish the exact mechanism with any certainty.

However, by isolating some of the most important reactions, we can try to determine whether they are part of a monofunctional metal-acid mechanism, a bifunctional metal-acid mechanism, or a more complex mechanism. Only some of these will be described below.

• Dehydrocycling of kerosenes

  In particular, the transformation of n-heptane into toluene has been the subject of a great deal of work aimed at establishing the kinetics of the reaction. Published data show that these kinetics are complex; in particular, it has been established that the order of the reaction with respect to hydrogen can be positive, negative or zero, and that the reaction...