In the presence of water vapour and a suitable catalyst, ethanol is converted to acetone rather than to ethylene and acetaldehyde. In order to develop an appropriate catalyst for this reaction, steady-state catalytic activities and selectivities were studied for 24 oxide catalysts. It was found that the acetone selectivity is high on a catalyst having both surface acidity and basicity, suggesting that the acetone formation is an acid-base bifunctional catalytic reaction. Iron oxide is superior to the other oxides studied here in both conversion and acetone selectivity. The superiority is greatly enhanced by mixing iron oxide with zinc oxide. The preparation method for the iron-zinc mixed oxide catalyst was also studied and it was found that the optimal composition is Zn/(Fe + Zn) = 0.1-0.4 and that the optimal condition for calcination is 773 K for 3 h. The catalyst gave 100% ethanol conversion and 94% acetone selectivity at a reaction temperature of 713 K. It is initially a mixture of Fe2O3 and ZnO but is converted to a spinel type compound, ZnFe2O4, during the reaction. The optimal reaction temperature was determined to be 713 K, and at this temperature, the acetone yield decreased by 34% after a time of 24 h.
