Ethanol dehydration is effectively catalyzed by strongly acidic zeolites which, however, exhibit poor time-on-stream stability. For example, HZSM-5 features strong acid sites, catalyzes ethylene oligomerization, and is prone to coking. Alumina and silica-alumina on the other hand have lower acidity, are relatively stable, but reach only low activity. Here, a series of mesoporous aluminosilicate catalysts was prepared by non-hydrolytic sol-gel (NHSG) and are shown to feature an intermediate level of acidity (both in strength and nature), resulting in intermediate catalytic performance. Importantly, the best NHSG-made samples were very stable with time on stream, did not produce any traces of ethylene oligomers, did not show any trace of coke formation, and their texture was unaffected. Characterization (ICP-OES, N₂-physisorption, TEM, XPS, IR-pyridine, Raman and solid state NMR spectroscopies) revealed that this behavior must be correlated with the remarkable degree of homogeneity in the NHSG-made aluminosilicate (only tetrahedrally coordinated Al species).

乙醇脱水可通过强酸性沸石有效地催化，但这种沸石的运行时间稳定性很差。例如，HZSM-5具有强酸位点，催化乙烯低聚并易于结焦。另一方面，氧化铝和二氧化硅-氧化铝具有较低的酸度，相对稳定，但是仅达到低活性。在此，通过非水解溶胶-凝胶（NHSG）制备了一系列介孔铝硅酸盐催化剂，并显示出中等水平的酸度（强度和性质），从而具有中等的催化性能。重要的是，最好的NHSG制得的样品在运行过程中非常稳定，不会产生任何痕量的乙烯低聚物，不会显示出任何焦炭形成，并且其质地也不受影响。表征（ICP-OES，N ₂-物理吸附，TEM，XPS，IR-吡啶，拉曼光谱和固态NMR光谱显示，此行为必须与NHSG制成的铝硅酸盐（仅四面配位的Al物种）的显着均匀度相关。