Alumina copper composites

Figure 14.15 Crack propagation in (a) alumina and an alumina/SiC composite, showing bridging by a SiC fiber (from Ref. [13]) and (b) alumina-copper composites showing bridging of crack by metal phase (from O. Lott, unpublished results).

Steenkamp, G. C., Keizer, K., Neomagus, H. W. J. R, and Krieg, H. M. 2002. Copper(II) removal from polluted water with alumina/chitosan composite membranes. J. Membr. Sci. 197 147-156. 

Because the synthesis reactions are exothermic with a net decrease in molar volume, equiUbrium conversions of the carbon oxides to methanol by reactions 1 and 2 are favored by high pressure and low temperature, as shown for the indicated reformed natural gas composition in Figure 1. The mechanism of methanol synthesis on the copper—zinc—alumina catalyst was elucidated as recentiy as 1990 (7). For a pure H2—CO mixture, carbon monoxide is adsorbed on the copper surface where it is hydrogenated to methanol. When CO2 is added to the reacting mixture, the copper surface becomes partially covered by adsorbed oxygen by the reaction C02 CO + O (ads). This results in a change in mechanism where CO reacts with the adsorbed oxygen to form CO2, which becomes the primary source of carbon for methanol. 

Steam reforming is the reaction of steam with hydrocarbons to make town gas or hydrogen. The first stage is at 700 to 830°C (1,292 to 1,532°F) and 15-40 atm (221 to 588 psih A representative catalyst composition contains 13 percent Ni supported on Ot-alumina with 0.3 percent potassium oxide to minimize carbon formation. The catalyst is poisoned by sulfur. A subsequent shift reaction converts CO to CO9 and more H2, at 190 to 260°C (374 to 500°F) with copper metal on a support of zinc oxide which protects the catalyst from poisoning by traces of sulfur. 

Perhaps even more noteworthy is the effect of crystallographic phase. While one phase of a specific composition may readily incorporate from a particular bath composition, another phase of the same composition may incorporate to a much lower extent or not at all. For instance, in the alumina particle system, the alpha phase has been found to readily incorporate from an acidic copper bath while the gamma phase incorporates at less than one tenth the amount of alpha, if at all, as shown in Table 1 [2, 11, 27, 31, 33],... 

The fact that LEIS provides quantitative information on the outer layer composition of multi-component materials makes this technique an extremely powerful tool for the characterization of catalysts. Figure 4.19 shows the LEIS spectrum of an alumina-supported copper catalyst, taken with an incident beam of 3 keV 4He+ ions. Peaks due to Cu, A1 and O and a fluorine impurity are readily recognized. The high intensity between about 40 and 250 eV is due to secondary (sputtered) ions. The fact that this peak starts at about 40 eV indicates that the sample has charged positively. Of course, the energy scale needs to be corrected for this charge shift before kinematic factors Ef/E-, are determined. 

Catalyst composition also depends on the type of reactor used. Fixed-bed iron catalysts are prepared by precipitation and have a high surface area. A silica support is commonly used with added alumina to prevent sintering. Catalysts for fluidized-bed application must be more attrition-resistant. Iron catalysts produced by fusion best satisfy this requirement. The resulting catalyst has a low specific surface area, requiring higher operating temperature. Copper, another additive used in the preparation of precipitated iron catalysts, does not affect product selectivity, but enhances the reducibility of iron. Lower reduction temperature is beneficial in that it causes less sintering. 

The resulting pastes, for all cases, were placed into a PVC cylindrical sleeve body. The conducting composite material glued to the copper contact was cured at 40°C during a week. Before each use, the surface of the electrode was wet with doubly distilled water and then thoroughly smoothed, first with abrasive paper and then with alumina paper (see more details on the preparation of GECE in Procedure 7). 

Figure 4. Inhomogeneity of silica-aluminas prepared by various methods. A series of 17 commercial samples of silica-aluminas from seven different producers was submitted to microanalysis. All of them showed considerable fluctuations of composition at the scale of several tens of nanometers to several micrometers. These samples were prepared by coprecipitation or by the sol-gel method. It is not known whether some of these samples were prepared from alkoxides. Smaller but significant fluctuations at the micrometer scale were also observed for two laboratory samples prepared from alkoxides. The samples were dispersed in water with an ultrasonic vibrator. A drop of the resulting suspension was deposited on a thin carbon film supported on a standard copper grid. After drying, the samples were observed and analyzed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) on a JEOL-JEM 100C TEMSCAN equiped with a KEVEX energy dispersive spectrometer for electron probe microanalysis (EPM A). The accelerating potential used was 100 kV.

Another type of preparation of the Cu/ZnO/A120 ( catalyst involves coprecipitation of the three components and the resulting catalyst contains neither spinel nor crystalline alumina. Fischer et al. (76) reported that a ternary catalyst of the nominal composition Cu/Zn0/Al203 = 60/35/5 mol% contained only crystalline copper and zinc oxide, and all the alumina... 

Tkachenko et al reported that compacts in iron, copper, nickel or cobalt matrices had operating temperature limits between 200 and 600 C, but compacts in molybdenum gave satisfactory friction and wear to 900 C in vacuum. A satisfactory composite for high-temperature aircraft brakes was described as containing 25% molybdenum disulphide, alumina and lead tungstate in a nickel matrix . The composites were pressed at 880 to 1080 MPa and sintered at 1010 C for two hours in vacuum. 

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