Synergizing Pd1Sb2 Site with Neighboring Near-Surface Pd Site to Break the Trade-Off between Selectivity and Activity of Alkyne Semihydrogenation.

The selective hydrogenation of alkynes to their corresponding alkenes is an important type of organic transformation, which is currently accomplished by modified palladium catalysts. Herein, we rep...

Thiol Treatment Creates Selective Palladium Catalysts for Semihydrogenation of Internal Alkynes

Modulation of metal nanocatalysts for enhanced selectivity of chemoselective reduction and addition hydrogenation

Selective hydrogenation of alkynes to alkenes remains challenging in the field of catalysis due to the ease of over-hydrogenated of alkynes to alkanes. Favorably, the incorporation of metal nanopar...

In this research, a heterogeneous Nano-Structured functionalized SBA-15 metformin palladium composite catalyst is reported for the selective hydrogenation of alkynes. In the first place, A series of the heterogeneous mesoporous SBA-15 metformin palladium catalyst were prepared and afterwards the condition and the ratio of used materials were optimized to give rise a suitable high performance catalyst. The final nano-structured catalyst was characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, BET surface area, FT-IR spectrophotometer, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and served in partial hydrogenation of different alkynes, with high selectivity and high yield. The liquid phase hydrogenation was conducted under mild condition of room temperature and atmospheric pressure. The reactions were monitored every half an hour by gas chromatography and all of them were completed during 4-6 hours. The products were characterized by 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, FT-IR, and Mass Spectrometry (MS) that strongly confirmed the (Z)-double bond configuration of produced alkenes. This prepared catalyst is competitive with the best palladium catalysts known for the selective liquid phase hydrogenation of alkynes and can be easily recovered and regenerated with keeping high activity and selectivity over multiple cycles with a simple regeneration procedure.

Selective acetylene hydrogenation is a crucial reaction for purifying ethylene in the petroleum industry and presents a promising non-oil route for producing ethylene by integrating acetylene production from natural gas and coal. Despite significant advancements in catalyst development, achieving both high catalytic activity and ethylene selectivity remains challenging due to competing side reactions, including over-hydrogenation to ethane, C-C coupling leading to oligomers, and C-C bond cleavage resulting in coke formation. This review provides a comprehensive overview of recent progress in the development of catalysts and understanding of reaction mechanism for acetylene hydrogenation to ethylene. Firstly, benchmarks for conversion and selectivity calculation are critically discussed. Then, research on active site design is categorized into monometallic sites, disordered alloy sites, intermetallic compound (IMC) sites, and single-atom (SA) sites, with a distinction between Pd-based and non-Pd-based catalysts. This categorization highlights the active site design strategies and summarizes state-of-the-art performance metrics. Emphasis is placed on the structure-performance relationships and the role of different active metals in enhancing ethylene selectivity and catalytic activity. In addition, the roles of catalyst support and modifiers are reviewed. Finally, we discuss challenges and future research directions in mechanistic understanding and catalyst design, aiming to guide further innovations in this important field.

It is well known that the addition of Ag into Pd can promote the selectivity of acetylene hydrogenation to ethylene, and early theoretical studies focus on ideal single crystal model catalysts, so it is worth studying relatively realistic catalyst models, such as metal oxide supported PdAg systems. In this work, the reaction mechanisms for acetylene selective hydrogenation on the anatase TiO2(101) supported PdaAgb (a + b = 4) cluster are studied by density functional theory calculations with a Hubbard U correction. The results show that Ag addition to the Pd4 cluster reduces the interaction between the PdAg cluster and the support, and the possible reason is that the amount of electron transfer from the TiO2 support to the PdAg cluster decreases with increasing number of Ag atoms. Consequently the adsorption energies of acetylene and ethylene would become smaller on the anatase supported PdAg cluster as compared to that on the anatase supported Pd4 cluster, and this may help to enhance the selectivity of ethylene formation. Moreover, the reaction kinetics study of acetylene hydrogenation on anatase TiO2(101) supported PdAg cluster shows that the activation energy of the hydrogenation step is higher on the PdAg cluster than that on the pure Pd4 cluster, and thus reduces its catalytic activity. Importantly, the present calculation results suggested that the selectivity of ethylene formation, which is defined as the energy difference between the adsorption energy of ethylene and the barrier for its further hydrogenation, varies with the ratio of Pd/Ag in the PdAg cluster: the Pd3Ag system shows relatively low selectivity compared to that of the pure Pd4 cluster, whereas Pd2Ag2/PdAg3 displays higher selectivity than that of the pure Pd4 cluster. Furthermore, our present results demonstrated that the anatase support plays a key role in the acetylene hydrogenation processes: on one hand, it reduces the reaction activity of acetylene hydrogenation processes compared to the Pd2Ag2/Pd(111) and Pd2Ag2 clusters; on the other hand, it enhances the selectivity of ethylene due to its lower desorption energy. It was also found that the carbon species inside the Pd2Ag2 cluster has little effect on the catalytic selectivity towards ethylene formation, whereas the hydrogenation catalytic activity is enhanced significantly. Finally the role of the Pd2Ag2-anatase interface on the catalytic properties of acetylene hydrogenation was studied, and it was found that the interface can increase the activity of acetylene hydrogenation but the selectivity is not improved.

A DFT study and micro-kinetic analysis of acetylene selective hydrogenation on Pd-doped Cu(111) surfaces

Surface Coordination Decouples Hydrogenation Catalysis on Supported Metal Catalysts

The selective hydrogenation of acetylene to ethylene on several Pd surfaces (Pd(111), Pd(100), Pd(211), and Pd(211)-defect) and Pd surfaces with subsurface species (carbon and hydrogen) as well as a number of Pd-based alloys (Pd–M/Pd(111) and Pd–M/Pd(211) (M=Cu, Ag and Au)) are investigated using density functional theory calculations to understand both the acetylene hydrogenation activity and the selectivity of ethylene formation. All the hydrogenation barriers are calculated, and the reaction rates on these surfaces are obtained using a two-step model. Pd(211) is found to have the highest activity for acetylene hydrogenation while Pd(100) gives rise to the lowest activity. In addition, more open surfaces result in over-hydrogenation to form ethane, while the close-packed surface (Pd(111)) is the most selective. However, we also find that the presence of subsurface carbon and hydrogen significantly changes the reactivity and selectivity of acetylene toward hydrogenation on Pd surfaces. On forming surface alloys of Pd with Cu, Ag and Au, the selectivity for ethylene is also found to be changed. A new energy decomposition method is used to quantitatively analyze the factors in determining the changes in selectivity. These surface modifiers are found to block low coordination unselective sites, leading to a decreased ethane production.

The selective hydrogenation of acetylene catalyzed by Pd nanoparticles is industrially used to increase the purity of ethylene. Despite the implementation of Pd based catalysts on an industrial scale, little is known about metal-support interactions on a fundamental level due to the complexity of these systems. In this study, the influence of metal-support interactions between Pd nanoparticles and two electronically modified a-SiO2 thin films on acetylene hydrogenation is investigated under ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions. The hydrogenation is performed under isothermal reaction conditions using a pulsed molecular beam reactive scattering (pMBRS) technique. Besides the activity and selectivity of clean Pd particles also the impact of dehydrogenated species intentionally introduced a priori is elucidated, whereas the active phase of the catalyst is additionally characterized by CO infrared reflection-absorption spectroscopy (IRRAS) and post-mortem temperature-programmed reaction (TPR). Metal-support interactions are found to influence the catalytic properties of Pd particles by charge-transfer, where positive charging leads to increased activity for acetylene hydrogenation. However, the increased activity is accompanied by formation of undesired byproducts. The active sites for acetylene and ethylene hydrogenation are shown to be different as previously proposed by the A and E model. The availability of the two different active sites on the Pd nanoparticles is determined by dehydrogenated species, whose nature and stability can be tuned by metal-support interactions. Based on these findings an electronic model is proposed how selectivity for acetylene hydrogenation can be steered solely by metal-support interactions leading to blocking of unselective sites in situ.

Boosting the activity of PdAg2/Al2O3 supported catalysts towards the selective acetylene hydrogenation by means of CO-induced segregation: A combined NAP XPS and mass-spectrometry study

Variation in the selectivity of ethylene produced by acetylene hydrogenation in an integral reactor was analyzed as a function of the hydrogen/acetylene ratio in the reaction stream at the reactor inlet. The analyses were made for two sample catalysts, which showed different dependence of the ethylene selectivity on the reactant composition. Even a small mismatch between the hydrogen/acetylene ratio at the reactor inlet and the ratio for converted reactants caused a large change in the ethylene selectivity along the reactor position, particularly when the conversion was high. The results of this study indicate two important factors to be considered in the design and operation of acetylene hydrogenation process: the hydrogen/acetylene ratio in the reactor inlet should be controlled close to the ratio for converted reactants; and catalysts showing high ethylene selectivity over a wide range of the hydrogen/ acetylene ratio are required for the design of a highly selective hydrogenation process.

Dynamic Modelling and Optimization of Acetylene Hydrogenation Reactor to Improve Overall Economics of Ethylene Plant

The alkyl group is the most common component of organic molecules and the most difficult to selectively functionalize. The development of catalysts for dehydrogenation of alkyl groups to give the corresponding olefins could open almost unlimited avenues to functionalization. Homogeneous systems, or more generally systems based on molecular (including solid-supported) catalysts, probably offer the greatest potential for regio- and chemoselective dehydrogenation of alkyl groups and alkanes. The greatest progress to date in this area has been achieved with pincer-ligated transition-metal-based catalysts; this and related chemistry are the subject of this review. Chemists are still far from achieving the most obvious and perhaps most attractive goal in this area, the dehydrogenation of simple alkanes to yield alkenes (specifically monoenes) with high yield and selectivity. Greater progress has been made with tandem catalysis and related approaches in which the initial dehydrogenated product undergoes a desirable secondary reaction. Also reviewed is the substantial progress that has been made in the closely related area of dehydrogenation of alkyl groups of substrates containing heteroatoms.