Removing carbonaceous contaminant from zinc oxide

摘要

A method for removing carbonaceous impurity from zinc oxide by contacting a water slurry of contaminated zinc oxide with oxygen in a reactor at reaction conditions sufficient to produce oxide products of the carbon contaminants and passing the reactor effluent through a filter to collect solid zinc oxide while passing the oxides of carbon through the filter. In a preferred embodiment, contaminated zinc oxide separated from the reaction product in the preparation of terephthalic acid from benzoic acid using zinc benzoate catalyst is subjected to treatment for removal of carbonaceous contaminants before being recycled to reaction with molten benzoic acid to produce zinc benzoate catalyst used in the reaction.