Israel E. Wachs

Operando Molecular Spectroscopy and Catalysis Laboratory

Department of Chemical Engineering

Lehigh University

Bethlehem, PA 18015

 

A major objective in heterogeneous catalysis research is to be able to molecularly design the catalytic active sites and their ligands or surroundings to control catalytic performance for a targeted reaction. This presentation will show how bifunctional catalysts containing surface acid and redox catalytic active sites can be molecularly designed and tuned to control the catalytic activity and selectivity. The model bifunctional acid-redox catalyst system chosen for this investigation is the supported V₂O₅-WO₃/TiO₂/SiO₂ system with vanadia providing the redox sites and tungsta providing the acid sites. The performance of these designed model bifunctional catalysts will be used to examine the behavior of several targeted acid-redox reactions (e.g., selective catalytic reduction of NO_x with ammonia, selective oxidation of methanol to dimethoxy methane (DMM) and propane ammoxidation to acrylonitrile).