Gas Conversion to Fuels and Chemicals Including Hydrogen

Natural gas has become an abundant hydrocarbon fuel and chemical feedstock and promises to remain so. Utilizing this resource with minimum environmental impact is a major challenge to catalysis. The present proposal consists of the following subprojects: 1) Catalytic dehydrogenation of NGL components. Catalytic dehydrogenation of ethane, propane, butane is an important industrial process. Coke formation is a major problem at industrial conditions. Coke is deposited on the metal and on the support and the catalyst must frequently be regenerated without loosing activity, selectivity and stability. The Tapered Element Oscillating Microbalance (TEOM) reactor has proved to be very successful in studying the kinetics of rapidly decaying catalysts. The present p roject addresses the study of catalytic dehydrogenation of lower alkanes by means of the TEOM reactor. 2) Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is an important part in GTL (gas-to-liquid) technology. A key element in impropved Fischer-Trops ch technonolgy is the development of active catalysts with high selectivity for waxes. The present proposal focuses on the mechanism for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis on Co catalysts and in particular on how the selectivity depends on catalyst properties. 3) MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems)-based microchannel catalyst/reactor system for production of hydrogen from methanol. The project focuses on the development of silicon-based microstructured system. Catalyst coatings applied to microchannel walls ar e to be developed and implemented.