A new catalyst and its techniques for the conversion of durene (1,2,4,5-tetramethylbenzene) were successfully developed by 508 group, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The catalyst, which has been running for more than 2000 hours, showed high stability with a durene conversion rate of 100%.

Methanol to hydrocarbons liquid fuel and chemicals is one of the hot topics in coal chemical industry. Comparing to F-T process, methanol to gasoline (MTG) shows high energy efficiency, simple technological process and less investment of the device. But, MTG process simultaneously produced plenty of durene (usually more than 8%), which is solid at room temperature (mp., 79.24 ℃). The existence of durene makes the gasoline always contain crystals at room temperature and in turn affects the quality of gasoline and raises production cost of MTG process.

To solve this problem, ICC developed a set of catalyst and technics to transfer durene and benzene to toluene, xylene, trimethylbenzen and so on, which all have low melt point and high octane number. The successful development of this technology provides a perfect route to tackle both the durene in MTG process and the surplus benzene in petroleum industry.