Patent ID: 6740615
Filing Date: 2004-05-25
Classification: B01J,C01B,Y02P

Abstract:
A method for regenerating used supported noble metal catalyst, comprising the steps of:(a) providing a used noble metal catalyst having process contaminant material deposits contained on the catalyst, said catalyst including a support having initial surface area of 20-600 m2/g and containing palladium (Pd), platinum (Pt), gold (Au), iridium (Ir), osmium (Os), rhodium (Rh), ruthenium (Ru) or combinations thereof on the support; at least a portion of said noble metal comprising noble metal particle clusters on said support; (b) cleaning said used catalyst by contacting it with an suitable organic cleaning solvent at a temperature of 0-200Â° C. and a pressure of 1-50 atm for sufficient contact time to substantially dissolve process contaminant material deposits from the catalyst; (c) drying said used cleaned catalyst and removing the organic cleaning solvent to provide a dried catalyst; (d) calcining said dried catalyst at a temperature of 200-600Â° C. for 1-24 hours duration and removing any remaining contaminant material deposits; and (e) adsorbing on said dried and calcined catalyst an organo-metallic complex forming agent while breaking down said noble metal particle clusters and relocating the resulting smaller metal particles on the support by contacting said catalyst with the organo-metallic complex forming agent at a temperature of 10-500Â° C. and a pressure of 1-10 atm, and thereby regenerating the catalyst activity level to at least 80% of its fresh catalyst activity, said agent having up to 20 carbon atoms, molecular weight not exceeding 300, and having an ionization constant pK1 exceeding about 2.5.