Direct Conversion of Syngas to Ethanol within Zeolite Crystals

By Chengtao Wang, Jian Zhang, Gangqiang Qin, Liang Wang, E. Zuidema, Qi Yang, S. Dang, Chengguang Yang, Jianping Xiao, Xiangju Meng and 2 more. Chem, 2020

173 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary The direct transformation of syngas into C2-oxygenates (e.g., ethanol) is in great demand, but it is still challenging because of the low selectivity and poor catalyst stability. Here, we overcome the issues and report a zeolite-fixation methodology to strengthen the transformation. By employing the extensively investigated RhMn catalyst, the silicate-1 zeolite-fixed RhMn nanoparticles with core-shell structure (RhMn@S-1) exhibit high efficacy for the C2 oxygenates production from syngas, giving oxygenate selectivity at 40.3% under CO conversion of 42.4% (C2-oxygenate selectivity at 88.3% in the total oxygenates), which decidedly outperforms the previous catalysts in direct syngas-to-ethanol transformation. Multiple studies demonstrate that the rigid zeolite framework efficiently stabilizes the Mn-O-Rhδ+ structure, known as the crucial site for C2-oxygenate formation. In the long-term test, the RhMn@S-1 catalyst exhibits constant C2-oxygenate productivities with superior durability. This investigation demonstrates the powerful siliceous zeolite support in the C2-oxygenate production, which has not been explored previously.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Catalysis, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7546051a8bba6a7fc4e156fb065688ac18695131