CO2 Hydrogenation over Unsupported Fe-Co Nanoalloy Catalysts

The thermo-catalytic synthesis of hydrocarbons from CO2 and H2 is of great interest for the conversion of CO2 into valuable chemicals and fuels. In this work, we aim to contribute to the fundamental understanding of the effect of alloying on the reaction yield and selectivity to a specific product. For this purpose, Fe-Co alloy nanoparticles (nanoalloys) with 30, 50 and 76 wt% Co content are synthesized via the Inert Gas Condensation method. The nanoalloys show a uniform composition and a size distribution between 10 and 25 nm, determined by means of X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. The catalytic activity for CO2 hydrogenation is investigated in a plug flow reactor coupled with a mass spectrometer, carrying out the reaction as a function of temperature (393–823 K) at ambient pressure. The Fe-Co nanoalloys prove to be more active and more selective to CO than elemental Fe and Co nanoparticles prepared by the same method. Furthermore, the Fe-Co nanoalloys catalyze the formation of C2-C5 hydrocarbon products, while Co and Fe nanoparticles yield only CH4 and CO, respectively. We explain this synergistic effect by the simultaneous variation in CO2 binding energy and decomposition barrier as the Fe/Co ratio in the nanoalloy changes. With increasing Fe content, increased activation temperatures for the formation of CH4 (from 440 K to 560 K) and C2-C5 hydrocarbons (from 460 K to 560 K) are observed.

Investigation of the heterogeneously catalysed gas phase CO2 hydrogenation reaction: Development of analysis methods and reaction analysis on pristine metal catalysts

Robin Tobias Andreas Mutschler

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the development of analysis methods that enable an improved investigation of the CO2 hydrogenation reaction such as quantitative mass spectrometry and infrared thermography. Furthermore, the contribution is in the characterization of the activity of basic catalyst building elements such as Fe, Co, Ni, Cu and Ru. To achieve these aims, we have developed and build a gas-controlling and analysis system to carry out the experiments in a wide range of conditions. In the frame of setting up the instruments and working on the analysis scripts, a rapid and quantitative gas analysis method by means of mass spectrometry was developed. In a second step, the CO2 hydrogenation reaction over Fe, Co, Ni and Cu in their pristine form was investigated with a particular focus on the catalytic activity and the activation energies. An Al2O3 supported Ru catalyst was used as reference catalyst. We showed that the reaction goes through a similar rate limiting step on Co, Ni and Ru/Al2O3, while the reaction rates are significantly different. Pristine Co showed minor activity in the formation of C2+ hydrocarbons. Fe was mostly active in the Carbon Monoxide formation. Cu exhibited no catalytic activity without a supporting metal-oxide phase. Based on these findings, we carried out an in-depth kinetical analysis of the catalytic CO2 hydrogenation over pristine Ni, Co and Ru/Al2O3 was carried out. A reaction model describing the CO2 hydrogenation over a broad temperature range, taking kinetically, diffusional and thermodynamic limitations into account, was developed. Diffusional limitation occurs at temperatures where the reaction kinetics is already rapid and diffusion of educts -and products to -and from the catalyst and its pores becomes rate limiting before the thermodynamic limitations are approached. The turnover rate of the CO2 conversion depends critically on the partial pressure of CO2 in the educts gas stream: With a high CO2 partial pressure, the catalyst surface saturates and the reaction order approaches zero. Out of the unsupported pristine metals Fe shows the lowest activation energy, but also the lowest activity while Co showed the highest activity and the highest activation energy for the overall CO2 conversion. Therefore, we have synthesized bimetallic nanosized pristine Fe-Co catalysts to investigate the influence of alloying Fe to Co and how this influences the activation energies of the formation of methane and C2-C5 hydrocarbons. We found clear trends towards higher activation energies with increasing Fe content- attributed to the stronger binding energy of CO2 to Fe. Furthermore, a new experiment for thermography was built with the aim to visualization the exothermic reaction dynamics. The dedicated reaction cell with an IR transparent window is coupled with the mass spectrometer. With the rapid gas sampling, the gas composition can directly be linked to the evolution of the thermal signal, contributing to the deeper understanding of the reaction start-up. We found and could prove that a CO2 covered surface has a strong inhibiting effect on the reaction startup while an H2 covered surface leads to a linear acceleration of the reaction front in the form of a thermal runaway.

EPFL2019

Mechanisms of the Heterogeneously Catalyzed Reaction of CO2 Hydrogenation on Transition Metal Surfaces

Kun Zhao

Renewable energy supply and energy storage in a closed materials cycle are the urgent global challenges of the 21st century. Carbon dioxide (CO2) hydrogenation over catalysts is a method to produce synthetic fuels from renewable energy in a CO2 neutral cycle. Numerous catalysts from pristine to novel materials have been investigated to achieve high CO2 conversion and selective hydrocarbon. Ahead of developing innovatively active catalyst with a high selectivity, it is crucial to understand the active sites and the related reaction mechanisms. Despite the fact that CO2 + H2 is a rather simple chemical equation, many reaction paths on a solid catalyst are possible. However, the proposed mechanisms from literatures have been controversial due to two main difficulties in 1) evidently identifying the reaction species, especially some vital transient species on the pathway of carbon hydrogenation and C-C coupling, and 2) proving the relation between surface structure of the catalysts and the reactivities. To address these difficulties, we built a new instrumental setup and developed an analysis program in order to investigate the catalyst surface and analyze the reaction mechanism in operando. We built up a diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy-mass spectroscopy-gas chromatography (DRIFTS-MS-GC) instrument for an operando study of the surface, gas, and liquid products using DRIFTS, MS, GC, and ex situ NMR. A bilevel evolutionary Gaussi-an fitting (BEGF) program was developed for dataset treatment including peak deconvolution and kinetic plot. Standard chemicals like carbonates, bicarbonates, formic acid, acetic acid, methanol, and ethanol, and isotopic spectra using 13CO2 and D2 in the reactions were em-ployed for supporting peak assignments. Based on these infrastructures, CO2 adsorption and hydrogenation reactions on pristine metals (Fe, Co, Ni, and Cu), metal hydride alloy (La-Ni4Cu), and metal-oxide (Co-CoO) were studied. We found out pure Fe, Co, Ni, Cu and La-Ni4Cu metals are not efficient for CO2 hydrogenation, and have no detectable adsorption spe-cies on the surface. High conversion (> 90%) of CO2 on Co-CoO surface emphasized the im-portance of oxide for CO2 chemisorption and for the observations of the surface species. The following investigation on oxide supported metal catalyst Ru/Al2O3 via an in situ control of the individual formation and hydrogenation of each adsorption species demonstrates that the oxide assists CO2 initial activation. CO2 methanation starts at the interface of the metal and the oxide and passes through the steps of CO2 ï® HCO3-* (and/or HCOO-* in CO2+H2 co-adsorption condition) ï® CO* ï® CH4. We further explored the relationship between met-al/(metal+oxide) ratio and their reactivities. We synthesized Co/(Co+CoO) catalysts in the DRIFTS-MS-GC instrument, and investigated the CO2 hydrogenation reaction on site. The results reveal that high concentration of the oxide in the catalyst boosts CO2 methanation, be-cause the CO2 binding is moderate and the adsorption is enhanced when the oxide concentra-tion increased. In short, we established equipment for an operando study of CO2 hydrogenation on catalyst surfaces, unraveled the surface reaction mechanisms and the active sites, developed a highly active catalyst, as well as initiated an efficient data analysis program.

EPFL2020

Développement de réacteurs microstructurés pour la conversion du propane en produits valorisés

Olivier Wolfrath

Industry requires continuously new chemical processes to convert raw materials to valuable products limiting the formation of by-products. Since a few years, an increasing interest has been given to the intensification of chemical processes. This represents a new approach in chemical reaction engineering and calls for a new type of chemical reactors: the microstructured reactors. They are characterized by miniature structures whose components have a sub-millimeter size. The flow channels, for example, have a diameter from ten to several hundred microns. The distinctive feature of these structures is a very large surface/volume ratio, namely between 10'000 and 50'000 m2/m3. In these conditions, heat transfer coefficient is very high, up to 25 kW · m-2 · K-1. It is accepted that the residence time distribution in a reactor strongly influences the product selectivity and yield. In these thin channels, the RTD is particularly narrow due to a short radial diffusion time (ms), allowing a precise control of the residence time. Another advantage of these microstructures is an increase of the inherent safety due to a small amount of the compounds used. However, fabrication of microreactors, especially the introduction of active catalyst in microchannels remains a difficult operation. And integration of microsystems in conventional chemical processes is still a challenge. The aim of this work is first to develop a novel membrane reactor based on a new microstructured catalytic packing in the filamentous form and to apply it to the nonoxydative dehydrogenation of propane. A second objective is to develop a reactor with micro heat exchangers allowing an optimized control of homogeneous reactions. This reactor was tested with the partial oxidation of propene to propylene oxide. The microstructured catalyst above is made of thin and long catalytic filaments placed in parallel with a tubular reactor. This new kind of catalyst is based on silica fibres covered by a γ-alumina layer. The position in parallel of these filaments of 7 μm diameter forces the gases to flow in the fibres direction between the filaments. The hydraulic diameter is about 70 μm. Due to this laminar and regular flow, the pressure drop in the bed was divided by 5 compared to a conventional bed (100-160 μm spheres) and the residence time distribution was particularly narrower. Such novel packing brings new opportunities to the heterogeneous catalysis domain because it can be used for many other reactions improving highly the hydrodynamics and keeping an excellent contact with the reactants. The microstructured catalyst was installed in two concentric zones of a tubular reactor separated by a palladium-silver membrane permeable to hydrogen. This product was removed from the gas phase to shift the thermodynamic equilibrium, enhancing the propane conversion from 22% up to 30%. Another significant advantage in this reactor is the increase of propene selectivity up to 97% in comparison to conventional industrial processes reaching 80-90%. This difference is due to the diminution of hydrogenolysis and hydroisomerization reactions. The dehydrogenation is known to be endothermic. Oxidation of the hydrogen passing through the membrane produced heat for this reaction along the catalytic zone. Moreover, a periodic regeneration by air allowed recovering the activity of the catalyst deactivated by coke formed during dehydrogenation. Periodic reaction operations allowed producing continuously propene with a high selectivity, and regenerating simultaneously the catalyst. The second microstructured reactor was developed integrating two micro heat exchangers at the inlet and outlet of a macroscopic tube. The aim is to heat up very fast the gas and to cool it down as well. Without these exchangers, heating and cooling duration corresponded each to about 20% of the total residence time. The use of the microstructures allowed diminishing significantly these durations (4-5% each). Applied to partial oxidation of propene, this reactor reached a more precise control of reaction temperature and duration. The propylene oxide (PO) selectivity was not increased with this system but, due to the microstructures, it was possible to work at higher temperatures where the reaction becomes very fast, without reaching an oxygen conversion of 100%. Indeed, it is essential to avoid this situation where oligomers and coke form dividing by 2 the PO selectivity. So another new kind of reactor was developed suitable for any fast exothermic reaction whose progression has to be limited because of potential consecutive reactions reducing, for example, the selectivity of an intermediate desired compound.

EPFL2001