Catalysts that can selectively oxidize a reactant to the desired product(s) and avoid over-oxidation hold out the promise of more energy and cost efficient catalytic processes. A focus of our research has been on the elucidation of molecular level mechanistic information for selected catalytic oxidation reactions employing highly dispersed VOx catalysts supported on metal oxides that are prepared by atomic layer deposition (ALD). These experiments have been carried out using in-situ transmission infrared spectroscopy as a primary probe of intermediates and products, which has been supplemented by diffuse reflectance infrared fourier transform spectroscopy and, in some cases, analysis of the products under steady state reaction conditions. The effect of the support and the nature of the oxidizer on the product distributions, and thus reaction pathways can provide direct insights into how these factors influence pathways that a system accesses in a complex reaction mechanism. This presentation will focus on mechanistic studies of the oxidation of methanol and of cyclohexene.

Mechanistic studies of oxidation reactions on supported vanadia catalysts

254th National Meeting (2017)

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