Patent ID: 7119239

Claim:
A process for the production of para-xylene, which process comprises: (a) providing a reformate comprising: (i) hydrogen; (ii) C 1 –C 5 hydrocarbons, (iii) C 6 –C 7 aromatic hydrocarbons comprising benzene, tolueno or mixtures thereof (iv) C 8+ aromatic hydrocarbons; and, (v) and from 0.2 to about 20 weight percent of non-aromatic C 6 –C 8 hydrocarbons based on the weight of the C 6 –C 7 aromatic hydrocarbons present in the reformate; and (b) methylating at least a portion of said benzene, toluene, or mixtures thereof present in said reformate in a methylation reaction zone with a methylating agent under vapor phase conditions effective for the methylation and in the presence of an acidic molecular sieve catalyst comprising an intermediate pore size molecular sieve to produce a resulting product having a higher xylenes content than said reformate; wherein: (I) at least 7 weight percent of the benzene and/or toluene present in said reformate is converted to xylenes;and, (II) at least 50 weight percent of said C 6 –C 8 non-aromatic hydrocarbons present in said reformate are cracked to lower molecular weight products.