Selectivity effects related to the diversity of active sites operating on nanostructured multifunctional catalysts

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to gain a better understanding of the selectivity of processes over multifunctional catalysts exhibiting diversity of operating active sites. The concept is that the concurrent performance of different types of active sites may provoke effects on the process selectivity comparable to the effects resulting from the kinetic regularities and activation energies of the occurring reactions. Accordingly, in the kinetic model the authors introduce specific parameters reflecting the contribution of distinct types of active sites, facilitating different reaction routes. Reasons are adduced how suchlike parameters serve to account the impact of various reaction routes occurring on different types of sites. The suggested approach links the deactivation-caused selectivity changes to dissimilarities in the vulnerability of different types of active sites. This work relates the probabilities for action of different types of sites to the size of active-phase islands. Various reaction mechanism patterns are modeled to examine relevant selectivity effects.