Dehydrogenation

In chemistry, dehydrogenation is a chemical reaction that involves the removal of hydrogen, usually from an organic molecule.

[1] As a problematic reaction, the fouling and inactivation of many catalysts arises via coking, which is the dehydrogenative polymerization of organic substrates.

In metal manufacturing and repairs, dehydrogenation is a thermal treatment which consists in removing the hydrogen absorbed by an object during an electrochemical or chemical process, performed in a specific oven at a temperature of 180–200 °C (360–390 °F) for a minimum time of 2 hours.

[citation needed] Dehydrogenation processes are used extensively to produce aromatics in the petrochemical industry.

These simple compounds are important raw materials for the synthesis of polymers and gasoline additives.

[citation needed] Relative to thermal cracking of alkanes, oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) is of interest for two reasons: (1) undesired reactions take place at high temperature leading to coking and catalyst deactivation, making frequent regeneration of the catalyst unavoidable, (2) thermal dehydrogenation is expensive as it requires a large amount of heat.

250–400 °C (480–750 °F) in the presence of iron oxide in combination with molybdenum and/or vanadium to produce formaldehyde according to the chemical equation:[9] A variety of dehydrogenation processes have been described for organic compounds.