Solid acid catalysts from clays: Oligomerization of 1-pentene on Al-pillared smectites

An aluminum pillared montmorillonite APM and aluminum pillared saponite APS were used as catalysts for the 1-pentene oligomerization, with different values of selectivity to the desired diesel range products, but the APM structure resulted to not resist to the necessary regeneration cycles. Pillared saponite APS that is known to have weaker acid sites, was found less selective to diesel products, but resulted very resistant to the regeneration treatments with a very low decrease of activity in the repeated runs. The catalytic activity results are correlated with the acidity and with the structural characteristics of the two samples.