H2O2 is a versatile and environmental benign oxidant with many industrial uses such as bleaching agent, disinfectant, cleaning agent, or as clean oxidant in many organic synthesis. Considerable research efforts have been dedicated for decades to seek a safer, cheaper, and more environmental friendly method for generating H2O2 directly from H2 and O2. However, the direct synthesis technology has not been commercialized yet due to the low H2O2 selectivity and activity of the process. We developed a novel Pd-Pt bimetallic heterogeneous catalyst that can produce H2O2 directly from H2 and O2 with high selectivity and activity. The advantage of this process is that no toxic organic chemicals are involved in the process and the only by-product is water, which is an attractive alternative to the current anthroquinone process. The catalyst was designed based on understanding at molecular level of reaction mechanism and surface structure of the Pd-based catalyst. A step-by-step reaction of H2 and O2 on the surface of Pd crystal clusters will be described. This is one of the examples showing that the fundamental understanding at the molecular level could guide the catalyst design for industrial application.

Direct synthesis of hydrogen peroxide from hydrogen and oxygen over a Palladium-based bimetallic heterogeneous catalyst

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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