Browsing by Subject "Selective catalytic oxidation"

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Open Access
Formaldehyde selectivity in methanol partial oxidation on silver: effect of reactive oxygen species, surface reconstruction, and stability of intermediates
(American Chemical Society, 2021-05-21) Karatok, Mustafa; Şensoy, M. G.; Vovk, Evgeny I.; Üstünel, H.; Toffoli, D.; Özensoy, Emrah
Selective oxidation reactions on heterogeneous silver catalysts are essential for the mass production of numerous industrial commodity chemicals. However, the nature of active oxygen species in such reactions is still debated. To shed light on the role of different oxygen species, we studied the methanol oxidation reaction on Ag(111) single-crystal model catalyst surfaces containing two dissimilar types of oxygen (electrophilic, Oe and nucleophilic, On). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and low energy electron diffraction experiments suggested that the atomic structure of the Ag(111) surface remained mostly unchanged after accumulating low Oe coverage at 140 K. Temperature-programmed reaction spectroscopic investigation of low coverages of Oe on Ag(111) revealed that Oe was active for methanol oxidation on Ag(111) with a high selectivity toward formaldehyde (CH2O) production. High surface oxygen coverages, on the other hand, triggered a reconstruction of the Ag(111) surface, yielding Ag oxide domains, which catalyzes methanol total oxidation to CO2 and decreases the formaldehyde selectivity. This important finding indicates a trade-off between CH2O selectivity and methanol conversion, where 93% CH2O selectivity can be achieved for an oxygen surface coverage of θO = 0.08 ML (ML = monolayer) with moderate methanol conversion, while methanol conversion could be boosted by a factor of ∼4 for θO = 0.26 ML with a suppression of CH2O selectivity to 50%. Infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy results and density functional theory calculations indicated that Ag oxide contains dissimilar adsorption sites for methoxy intermediates, which are also energetically less stable than that of the unreconstructed Ag(111). The current findings provide important molecular-level insights regarding the surface structure of the oxidized Ag(111) model catalyst directly governing the competition between different reaction pathways in methanol oxidation reaction, ultimately dictating the reactant conversion and product selectivity.
Open Access
Selective catalytic ammonia oxidation to nitrogen by atomic oxygen species on Ag (111)
(American Chemical Society, 2017) Karatok, M.; Vovk, E. I.; Koc, A. V.; Ozensoy, E.
Ammonia-selective catalytic oxidation was studied on the planar Ag(111) single-crystal model catalyst surface under ultra-high-vacuum (UHV) conditions. A variety of oxygen species were prepared via ozone decomposition on pristine Ag(111). Surface coverages of oxygen species were quantified by temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy techniques. Exposure of ozone on Ag(111) at 140 K led to a surface atomic oxygen (Oa) overlayer. Low-energy electron diffraction experiments revealed that annealing of this atomic oxygen-covered Ag(111) surface at 473 K in UHV resulted in the formation of ordered oxide surfaces (Oox) with p(5×1) or c(4×8) surface structures. Ammonia interactions with O/Ag(111) surfaces monitored by temperature-programmed reaction spectroscopy indicated that disordered surface atomic oxygen selectively catalyzed N-H bond cleavage, yielding mostly N2 along with minor amounts of NO and N2O. Higher coverage O/Ag(111) surfaces, whose structure was tentatively assigned to a bulklike amorphous silver oxide (Obulk), showed high selectivity toward N2O formation (rather than N2) due to its augmented oxygen density. In contrast, ordered surface oxide overlayers on Ag(111) (where the order was achieved by annealing the oxygen adlayer to 473 K) showed only very limited reactivity toward ammonia. The nature of the adsorbed NH3 species on a clean Ag(111) surface and its desorption characteristics were also investigated via infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy and TPD techniques. Current findings demonstrate that the Ag(111) surface can selectively oxidize NH3 to N2 under well-defined experimental conditions without generating significant quantities of environmentally toxic species such as NO2, NO, or N2O.