We investigated the interactions between nickel oxide and silica–alumina supports, which were applied to the catalytic oligomerization of ethylene by powder X-ray diffraction, UV diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, H₂ temperature-programmed reduction, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The catalytic activity was also correlated with the acidity of catalysts determined by NH₃ temperature-programmed desorption and pyridine FT-IR spectroscopy. Although all the catalysts had similar Ni contents, their catalytic performances were strongly influenced by the strength of the metal oxide–support interaction. Strong interaction promoted the formation of nickel aluminate on the catalyst surface, and resulted in low catalytic activity due to reducing the amount of nickel oxide active sites. However, weak interaction favored the aggregation of nickel oxide species into larger particles, and thus resulted in low ethylene conversion and selectivity to oligomers. Eventually, the optimal activity was realized at the medium interaction strength, preserving a high amount of both active nickel oxides and acid sites.

Bioethanol dehydration was carried out in a bench scale reactor-loaded H-ZSM-5 molded catalyst, which increased by tens of times more than at lab scale (up to 60 and 24 times based on the amount of catalyst and ethanol flow rate, respectively). From the results of the lab scale reaction, we confirmed the optimum Si/Al ratio (14) of H-ZSM-5, reaction temperature (~250 °C), and weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) (<5 h⁻¹) indicating high ethanol conversion and ethylene selectivity. Five types of cylindrical shaped molded catalysts were prepared by changing the type and/or amount of organic solid binder, inorganic solid binder, inorganic liquid binder, and H-ZSM-5 basis catalyst. Among them, the catalyst exhibiting the highest compression strength and good ethanol dehydration performance was selected. The bench scale reaction with varying reaction temperature of 245–260 °C and 1.2– 2.0 h⁻¹ WHSV according to reaction time showed that the conversion and ethylene selectivity were more than 90% after 400 h on stream. It was also confirmed that even after the successive catalyst regeneration and the reaction for another 400 h, both the ethanol conversion and ethylene selectivity were still maintained at about 90%.