The synthesis of quinolines from aniline and a C1–C4 alcohol was conducted under gas-phase reaction conditions over a series of zeolite-based catalysts. The texture and acid properties of catalysts were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, BET and NH3-TPD techniques. It was found that the total yield of quinolines was positively related to the relative content of Lewis acid sites of the catalyst. Among others, the ZnCl2/Ni-USY-acid catalyst possessed the best performance. Over this catalyst, the reactions of aniline and most of the alcohols provided a 42.3–79.7% total yield of quinolones under mild conditions, however, those of aniline and methanol, ethanol and iso-propanol predominantly led to N-alkylanilines. Furthermore, the reaction pathways for synthesizing quinolines via aniline reacting with polyhydric alcohols or monohydric alcohols was proposed in our work.
