Vapor phase Beckmann rearrangement of cyclohexanone oxime over tantalum pillared magadiite

Abstract

Vapor phase Beckmann rearrangement of cyclohexanone oxime to ε-caprolactam was studied using tantalum-pillared magadiites (Ta-magadiites) with different surface areas as catalysts. The Ta-magadiite catalysts of relatively large surface areas exhibited high catalytic activities, due to a large number of active sites. For the Ta-magadiite catalyst of the largest surface area, the oxime conversion reached 99.1% with 97.5% of lactam selectivity. The high catalytic performance of Ta-magadiite catalyst were attributed to the new hydroxyl groups and large amount of acidic sites generated by Ta pillaring into the magadiite interlayer. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 13th International Zeolite Conference (Montpellier, France 7/8-13/2001).