Dimerization of n-butenes for high octane gasoline components

Dimerization of linear olefins represents an attractive route for the production of high octane number blending components. The oligomerization needs not only to be high conversion and to produce mainly dimers but also to be selective within the dimer range, as only certain isomers have advantageous blending octane numbers. Moreover, the octane numbers of these dimers blend in a highly nonlinear fashion. Normally the focus for such gasoline polymerization processes is on maximizing branching; however, in this study we seek to maximize the fraction of allylic hydrogens, because we have shown that these are directly linked to the blending octane number of the species, 1-Butene and 2-butene produce different quality dimer gasoline. This unexpected result can be explained from a consideration of the isomerization kinetics between the butene monomers.