Patent ID: 7795483

Claim:
A modified alkylbenzene composition produced by a process, the process comprising the steps of: a) passing a feed stream comprising a lightly branched C 10 -C 28 acyclic paraffin and at least one other acyclic paraffin and having a first concentration of the lightly branched acyclic paraffin to an adsorption zone comprising a bed of an absorbent comprising silicalite at adsorption promoting conditions to selectively adsorb the lightly branched acyclic paraffin, contacting the bed of adsorbent with a desorbent stream comprising at least one component selected from the group consisting of a C 5 -C 8 cycloparaffin, a C 5 -C 8 normal paraffin, and a C 5 -C 8 branched paraffin and recovering from the adsorption zone an adsorption extract having a second concentration of the lightly branched acyclic paraffin that is greater than the first concentration; b) passing at least a portion of the adsorption extract to a dehydrogenation zone, operating the dehydrogenation zone at dehydrogenation conditions sufficient to dehydrogenate the acyclic paraffin, and recovering from the dehydrogenation zone a dehydrogenated product stream comprising a lightly branched C 10 - C 28 acyclic monoolefin; c) passing a feedstock comprising a phenyl compound and passing at least a portion of the dehydrogenated product stream comprising the acyclic lightly branched monoolefin to an alkylation zone, operating the alkylation zone at alkylation conditions sufficient to alkylate the phenyl compound with the lightly branched acyclic monoolefin in the presence of a solid, molecular sieve alkylation catalyst to form phenyl-alkanes comprising molecules having one phenyl portion and one C 10 -C 28 aliphatic alkyl portion; wherein the aliphatic alkyl portion has no quaternary carbon atoms except for any quaternary carbon atom bonded by a carbon-carbon bond with a carbon atom of the phenyl portion; and wherein the phenyl-alkanes have selectivity to 2-phenyl-alkanes of from about 40 to about 100 and a selectivity to internal quaternary phenyl-alkanes of less than 10; and d) recovering the phenyl-alkanes from the alkylation zone.