Method for oxidative dehydrogenation of N-butenes to butadiene

The invention relates to a method for the oxidative dehydrogenation of n-butenes to butadiene, comprising two or more production steps (i) and at least one regeneration step (ii), in which (i) in a production step an n-butene-containing starting gas mixture is mixed with an oxygen-containing gas and is contacted in a fixed-bed reactor at a temperature of 220 to 490 DEG C with a multimetal oxide catalyst arranged in a catalyst fixed bed, which multimetal oxide catalyst contains at least molybdenum, and one further metal, and, before the loss in conversion rate at constant temperature is > 25%, (ii), in a regeneration step the multimetal oxide catalyst is regenerated by passing an oxygen-containing regeneration gas mixture at a temperature of 200 to 450 DEG C over the catalyst fixed bed and burning off the carbon deposited on the catalyst, wherein, between two production steps (i), one regeneration step (ii) is carried out, characterized in that, per regeneration step (ii), 2 to 50% by weight of the carbon deposited on the catalyst is burnt off.