Direct Methane to Methanol: The Selectivity–Conversion Limit and Design Strategies

By Allegra A. Latimer, Arvin Kakekhani, A. Kulkarni, Jens K. Nørskov. ACS Catalysis, 2018

241 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Currently, methane is transformed into methanol through the two-step syngas process, which requires high temperatures and centralized production. While the slightly exothermic direct partial oxidation of methane to methanol would be preferable, no such process has been established despite over a century of research. Generally, this failure has been attributed to both the high barriers required to activate methane as well as the higher activity of the CH bonds in methanol compared to those in methane. However, a precise and general quantification of the limitations of catalytic direct methane to methanol has yet to be established. Herein, we present a simple kinetic model to explain the selectivity–conversion trade-off that hampers continuous partial oxidation of methane to methanol. For the same kinetic model, we apply two distinct methods, (1) using ab initio calculations and (2) fitting to a large experimental database, to fully define the model parameters. We find that both methods yield strikingly sim...

Subfields: Catalysis, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ca7d3cf32e442b3f00cad01200bcc7fb3b4412fb