Alkali promoter

Mortensen J J, Hammer B and Norskov J K 1998 Alkali promotion of N2 dissociation over Ru(OOOI) Phys. Rev. Lett. 80 4333... 

Adsorption of Gases on Surfaces Modified by Alkali Promoters... 

The last point is confirmed by measuring the work function changes upon CO chemisorption on clean and alkali-promoted metal surfaces. Figures 2.16 and 2.17 show the work function changes induced by CO adsorption on a K/Pt(lll) and on a Na/Ru(1010) surface respectively, for various alkali... 

The alkali promotion of CO dissociation is substrate-specific, in the sense that it has been observed only for a restricted number of substrates where CO does not dissociate on the clean surface, specifically on Na, K, Cs/Ni( 100),38,47,48 Na/Rh49 and K, Na/Al(100).43 This implies that the reactivity of the clean metal surface for CO dissociation plays a dominant role. The alkali induced increase in the heat of CO adsorption (not higher than 60 kJ/mol)50 and the decrease in the activation energy for dissociation of the molecular state (on the order of 30 kJ/mol)51 are usually not sufficient to induce dissociative adsorption of CO on surfaces which strongly favor molecular adsorption (e. g. Pd or Pt). 

Alkali promoters are often used for altering the catalytic activity and selectivity in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis and the water-gas shift reaction, where C02 adsorption plays a significant role. Numerous studies have investigated the effect of alkalis on C02 adsorption and dissociation on Cu, Fe, Rh, Pd, A1 and Ag6,52 As expected, C02 always behaves as an electron acceptor. 

The presence of alkali promoters on the substrate surface can affect both the rate of chemisorption, (e.g. on K/Rh(100))55 and the adsorptive capacity... 

Alkali promoted NO dissociation is clearly illustrated in the case of NO adsorption on K/Pt(lll), as NO is not adsorbed dissociatively on the alkali-clean surface. The dissociative adsorption of NO on K/Pt(l 11) takes place at temperatures higher than 300 K and the number of dissociated NO molecules... 

The effect of alkali presence on the adsorption of oxygen on metal surfaces has been extensively studied in the literature, as alkali promoters are used in catalytic reactions of technological interest where oxygen participates either directly as a reactant (e.g. ethylene epoxidation on silver) or as an intermediate (e.g. NO+CO reaction in automotive exhaust catalytic converters). A large number of model studies has addressed the oxygen interaction with alkali modified single crystal surfaces of Ag, Cu, Pt, Pd, Ni, Ru, Fe, Mo, W and Au.6... 

The effect of alkali additives on N2 chemisorption has important implications for ammonia synthesis on iron, where alkali promoters (in the form of K or K20) are used in order to increase the activity of the iron catalyst. 

The effect of the presence of alkali promoters on ethylene adsorption on single crystal metal surfaces has been studied in the case ofPt (111).74 77 The same effect has been also studied for C6H6 and C4H8 on K-covered Pt(l 11).78,79 As ethylene and other unsaturated hydrocarbon molecules show net n- or o-donor behavior it is expected that alkalis will inhibit their adsorption on metal surfaces. The requirement of two free neighboring Pt atoms for adsorption of ethylene in the di-o state is also expected to allow for geometric (steric) hindrance of ethylene adsorption at high alkali coverages. 

Ethylene is currently converted to ethylene oxide with a selectivity of more than 80% under commercial conditions. Typical operating conditions are temperatures in the range 470 to 600 K with total pressures of 1 to 3 Mpa. In order to attain high selectivity to ethylene oxide (>80%), alkali promoters (e.g Rb or Cs) are added to the silver catalyst and ppm levels of chlorinated hydrocarbons (moderators) are added to the gas phase. Recently the addition of Re to the metal and of ppm levels of NOx to the gas phase has been found to further enhance the selectivity to ethylene oxide. 

In this sense subsurface oxygen is also acting as a promoter. The role of the alkali promoter is then to stabilize Cl and anionically bonded O (or nitrate ions) on the catalyst surface, so they can exert their promotional action. Thus alkalis in this system, which requires electronegative promoters according to the mles of section 2.5, are not really promoters but rather promoter stabilizers. This is proven by their inability to promote selectivity in absence of Cl. 

To confirm these predictions we examine here in some detail only the case of hydrocarbon production where alkali promoters play an important role in industrial practice. 

It is obvious that one can use the basic ideas concerning the effect of alkali promoters on hydrogen and CO chemisorption (section 2.5.1) to explain their effect on the catalytic activity and selectivity of the CO hydrogenation reaction. For typical methanation catalysts, such as Ni, where the selectivity to CH4 can be as high as 95% or higher (at 500 to 550 K), the modification of the catalyst by alkali metals increases the rate of heavier hydrocarbon production and decreases the rate of methane formation.128 Promotion in this way makes the alkali promoted nickel surface to behave like an unpromoted iron surface for this catalytic action. The same behavior has been observed in model studies of the methanation reaction on Ni single crystals.129... 

R.M. Lambert, F. Williams, A. Palermo, and M.S. Tikhov, Modelling alkali promotion in heterogeneous catalysis in situ electrochemical control of catalytic reactions, Topics in Catalysis 13, 91-98 (2000). 

J. Paul, and F.M. Hoffmann, Alkali promoted CO bond weakening on aluminum A comparison with transition metal surfaces,/. Chem Phys. 86(9), 5188-5195 (1987). 

Figure 6.11 comes from the classical promotion literature and refers to CO oxidation on Pt(lll) promoted with Li.83 As with every alkali promoter,... 

This simple concept has already found some practical applications The idea to use supported alkali-promoted noble metal catalysts for NO reduction,3,4 even under mildly oxidizing conditions,5 came as a direct consequence of electrochemical promotion studies utilizing both YSZ (Chapter 8) and p"-Al203 (Chapter 9), which showed clearly the electrophi-licity of the NO reduction reaction even in presence of coadsorbed O. This dictated the use of a judiciously chosen alkali promoter coverage to enhance both the rate and selectivity under realistic operating conditions on conventional supported catalysts. 

Electrochemical promotion has also been used to determine the optimal alkali promoter coverage on Ag epoxidation catalysts as a function of chlorinated hydrocarbon moderator level in the gas phase (Chapter 8). 

Lambert, alkali promotion and electrochemical promotion, 447 XPS and AES, 254 Langmuir, 20, 306 Lateral interactions attractive, 266... 

Alkali-promoted Ru-based catalysts are expected to become the second generation NHs synthesis catalysts [1]. In 1992 the 600 ton/day Ocelot Ammonia Plant started to produce NH3 with promoted Ru catalysts supported on carbon based on the Kellogg Advanced Ammonia Process (KAAP) [2]. The Ru-based catalysts permit milder operating conditions compared with the magnetite-based systems, such as low synthesis pressure (70 -105 bars compared with 150 - 300 bars) and lower synthesis temperatures, while maintaining higher conversion than a conventional system [3]. 

The Ru metal area was determined by volumetric H2 chemisorption in the quartz U-tube of an Autosorb 1-C set-up (Quantachrome) following the procedure described in ref. [16]. Prior to chemisorption, the catalysts were activated by passing 80 Nml/min high-purity synthesis gas (Pnj / Phj -1/3) from a connected feed system through the U-tube and heating to 673 K for alkali-promoted catalysts or to 773 K for alkali-free catalysts with a heating rate of 1 K/min. The BET area was measured by static N2 physisorption in the same set-up. 

Results of the H2 chemisorption measurements after NH3 synthesis based on H/Ru = 1/1. NHs synthesis was run at 773 K with Ru/MgO and RU/AI2OS, and at 673 K with all alkali-promoted catalysts. The mean particle size was calculated assunung spherical particles. 

Fig. 3 A shows the effluent NH3 concentration observed for Ru/MgO as a function of reaction temperature for three different Pn, / Phj / Paf ratios at 20 bar total pressure. It is obvious that the reaction orders for N2 and H2 have opposite signs. Fig. 3B illustrates that the reaction orders for N2 and H2 partly compensate each other in the kineticaliy controlled temperature regime. Hence an increase in total pressure with a constant Pnj / Phj 1/3 ratio does not lead to a significant increase in conversion at lower temperatures. For the plication of alkali-promoted Ru catalysts under industrial synthesis conditions, it is necessary to find a compromise between kinetics and thermodynamics by increasing the Pn, / Phj ratio. The optimum observed for Cs-Ru/MgO prepared from CS2CO3 at 50 bar is at about Pnj / Phj 40 / 60 [15]. The high NH3 concentration of about 8 % obtained with 0.138 g catalyst using a total flow of 100 Nml/min clearly shows that Ru catalysts have indeed the potential to replace Fe-based catalysts in industrial synthesis [15].

The rate constants in table 4 for Ru/AlaOs should be considered as initial rate constants since it was not possible to achieve a higher coverage of N— than 0.25. Furthennorc, it was not possible to detect TPA peaks for Ru/AlaOs within the experimental detection limit of about 20 ppm. Ru/MgO is a heterogeneous system with respect to the adsorption and desorption of Na due to the presence of promoted active sites which dominate under NH3 synthesis conditions. The rate constant of desorption given in table 4 for Ru/MgO refers to the unpromoted sites [19]. The Na TPD, Na TPA and lER results thus demonstrate the enhancing influence of the alkali promoter on the rate of N3 dissociation and recombination as expected based on the principle of microscopic reversibility. Adding alkali renders the Ru metal surfaces more uniform towards the interaction with Na. 

---