Ethylene, primarily produced through the energy intensive and low selectivity process of hydrocarbon steam cracking, is the highest volume chemical produced worldwide. Ethane oxidative dehydrogenation offers the potential to produce ethylene at much higher selectivity and operate at lower temperature making it a compelling alternative. This presentation will summarize our efforts to develop and characterize low temperature ethane oxidative dehydrogenation catalysts. Doped nickel oxides (Ni-M-O; M = Nb, Sn, Ta, Ti and W) were made via our novel solventless synthesis. Our Ni-M-O materials demonstrated improved performance in ethane oxidative dehydrogenation in comparison to those produced by sol-gel methods. Characterization by XRD, SEM, TEM and HAADF-STEM revealed two domains in the materials made using the solventless synthesis. The primary domain is best described as dopant atoms well distributed within the nickel oxide lattice while the secondary (minor) domain is discrete clusters or layers of the dopant metal oxide surrounded by the Ni-M-O matrix. DFT calculations assessing the thermodynamic feasibility for the formation of the doped Ni-M-O matrix will be presented along our hypothesis on how the Ni-M-O domain improves catalyst performance.

Doped nickel oxides prepared by solventless synthesis: Ethane oxidative dehydrogenation performance and characterization

255th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.