Nickel, chemisorption

To give an idea of the wide rai e of catalytic systems that have been investigated where chemisorption data were essential to interpret the results, some of the author s papers will be discussed. Measurements were reported on the surface areas of a very wide range of metals that catalyze the hydrogenation of ethane. In the earliest paper, on nickel, the specific catalytic activity of a supported metal was accurately measured for the first time it was shown also that the reaction rate was direcdy proportional to the nickel surface area. Studies on the same reaction... 

In addition to actual synthesis tests, fresh and used catalysts were investigated extensively in order to determine the effect of steam on catalyst activity and catalyst stability. This was done by measurement of surface areas. Whereas the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) area (4) is a measure of the total surface area, the volume of chemisorbed hydrogen is a measure only of the exposed metallic nickel area and therefore should be a truer measure of the catalytically active area. The H2 chemisorption measurement data are summarized in Table III. For fresh reduced catalyst, activity was equivalent to 11.2 ml/g. When this reduced catalyst was treated with a mixture of hydrogen and steam, it lost 27% of its activity. This activity loss is definitely caused by steam since a... 

However, the experimental evidence collected during recent years, concerning mostly the nickel-copper alloy systems, complicated this almost currently accepted interpretation of the alloy catalytic behavior (45). Chemisorptive and subsequent catalytic phenomena appeared to require a different approach for elucidation. The surface reactivity had to be treated as a localized quality of the atoms at the interface, influenced by their neighbors in the crystal lattice (78-80). A detailed general discussion of catalysis on alloys is beyond the scope of this review. In the monograph by Anderson (81) and in the review by Moss and Whalley (82), recently published, a broad survey of the catalytic reactivity of alloys may be found. 

Cobalt, nickel and copper naked metal clusters and olefin chemisorption models. G. A. Ozin, Coord. Chem. Rev., 1979, 28, 117-146 (45). 

The temperature regimes for the stability of intermediates is different for various transition metals. For example on Fe(lll) the adsorbed ethylene decomposes partially at 200 K, while the conversion to surface carbon is complete at 370 K. Similarly, on nickel faces molecular chemisorption of ethylene is restricted to temperatures below ambient. At temperatures between approximately 290 K and 450 K ethylene chemisorption on nickel... 

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... 

D.W. Goodman, Chemical modification of chemisorptive and catalytic properties of Nickel, Appl. Surf. Sci. 19, 1-13 (1984). 

The carbonyl clusters provide an interesting set of models for the chemisorption of CO on nickel. It is very interesting that, for the Ni (CO) assignments, a plot of Pco versus 1/n for the three-center-bonded CO moieties extrapolates to 1950 cm for = oo (the "chemi-... 

It is well established that sulfur compounds even in low parts per million concentrations in fuel gas are detrimental to MCFCs. The principal sulfur compound that has an adverse effect on cell performance is H2S. A nickel anode at anodic potentials reacts with H2S to form nickel sulfide. Chemisorption on Ni surfaces occurs, which can block active electrochemical sites. The tolerance of MCFCs to sulfur compounds is strongly dependent on temperature, pressure, gas composition, cell components, and system operation (i.e., recycle, venting, and gas cleanup). Nickel anode at anodic potentials reacts with H2S to form nickel sulfide. Moreover, oxidation of H2S in a combustion reaction, when recycling system is used, causes subsequent reaction with carbonate ions in the electrolyte [1]. Some researchers have tried to overcome this problem with additional device such as sulfur removal reactor. If the anode itself has a high tolerance to sulfur, the additional device is not required, hence, cutting the capital cost for MCFC plant. To enhance the anode performance on sulfur tolerance, ceria coating on anode is proposed. The main reason is that ceria can react with H2S [2,3] to protect Ni anode. 

Methane is a stable molecule and therefore hard to activate. As a result the sticking probability for dissociative chemisorption is small, of the order of 10 only, and ruthenium is more reactive than nickel. However, a stretched overlayer of nickel is significantly more active than nickel in its common form, in agreement with expectation. 

It is most convenient to explain catalysis using an example. We have chosen a hydrogenation catalysed by nickel in the metallic state. According to the schematic of Fig. 3.1 the first step in the actual catalysis is adsorption . It is useful to distinguish physisorption and chemisorption . In the former case weak, physical forces and in the latter case relatively strong, chemical forces play a role. When the molecules adsorb at an active site physisorption or chemisorption can occur. In catalysis often physisorption followed by chemisorption is the start of the catalytic cycle. This can be understood from Fig. 3.2, which illustrates the adsorption of hydrogen on a nickel surface. 

Figure 3.2. Potential energy diagram of chemisorption for the adsorption of hydrogen on nickel (after Le Page, 1987).

Beeck at Shell Laboratories in Emeryville, USA, had in 1940 studied chemisorption and catalysis at polycrystalline and gas-induced (110) oriented porous nickel films with ethene hydrogenation found to be 10 times more active than at polycrystalline surfaces. It was one of the first experiments to establish the existence of structural specificity of metal surfaces in catalysis. Eley suggested that good agreement with experiment could be obtained for heats of chemisorption on metals by assuming that the bonds are covalent and that Pauling s equation is applicable to the process 2M + H2 -> 2M-H. 

Oudar and co-workers studied the dissociative chemisorption of hydrogen sulfide at Cu(110) surfaces between 1968 and 1971.3,14 As in the case of Ni(110) described below, a series of structures were identified, which in order of increasing sulfur coverage were described as c(2 x 2), p(5 x 2) and p(3 x 2). In contrast to nickel, the formation of the latter phase is kinetically very slow from the decomposition of H2S and could only be produced at high temperatures and pressures. The c(2 x 2) and p(5 x 2) structures were confirmed by LEED,15 17 but the p(3 x 2) phase has not been observed by H2S adsorption since Oudar and colleagues work. 

This reduction step can be readily observed at a mercury electrode in an aprotic solvent or even in aqueous medium at an electrode covered with a suitable surfactant. However, in the absence of a surface-active substance, nitrobenzene is reduced in aqueous media in a four-electron wave, as the first step (Eq. 5.9.3) is followed by fast electrochemical and chemical reactions yielding phenylhydroxylamine. At even more negative potentials phenylhydroxylamine is further reduced to aniline. The same process occurs at lead and zinc electrodes, where phenylhydroxylamine can even be oxidized to yield nitrobenzene again. At electrodes such as platinum, nickel or iron, where chemisorption bonds can be formed with the products of the... 

It has been suggested that the rate limiting step in the mechanism is the chemisorption of propionaldehyde and that the hydrogen undergoes dissociative adsorption on nickel. Determine if the rate expression predicted by a Hougen-Watson model based on these assumptions is consistent with the experimentally observed rate expression. 

Few studies have been made of benzene chemisorption by the volumetric method. Zettlemoyer et al. (8) have examined the adsorption of benzene vapor at 0°C on powders of nickel and of copper. First, the monolayer coverage of argon (vm) A, was measured. The argon was then removed by pumping and the amount of benzene required to form a monolayer, (vmi) Bz, was measured. Weakly adsorbed benzene was then removed by pumping, after which further benzene adsorption provided the value (vm2) Bz. Some results are reproduced in Table I. On the assumption that the same extent of surface is accessible both for argon and for benzene adsorption, it is clear that complete monolayers of benzene were not achieved, that some (Ni) or all (Cu) of the benzene was adsorbed reversibly. It was considered that only the irreversibly adsorbed benzene was chemisorbed, the remainder being physically adsorbed. Thus chemisorption of benzene on copper appeared not to occur. The heat of adsorption of benzene on nickel at zero... 

The temperature dependence of the extent of adsorption was not interpreted, except that the results were considered to be consistent with the magnetic measurements of Selwood (see Section II,C) which indicate that the number of carbon-metal bonds between adsorbed species and the surface increases threefold between 120°and 200°C due to extensive dissociative chemisorption. The authors proposed that two forms of chemisorbed benzene exist at the nickel surface, (i) an associatively adsorbed form which can be displaced by further benzene, and which may be w- or hexa-dissociatively adsorbed form that requires the presence of hydrogen to bring about its removal from the surface. 

Fig. 2. (a) Magnetization-volume isotherms for the chemisorption of hydrogen and of benzene on kieselguhr-supported nickel at 150° C (16). (b) Average number of bonds formed by benzene adsorbed on nickel-silica as a function of temperature (17). From J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 79, 4637 (1957) 83, 1033 (1961). Copyright by the American Chemical Society. Reprinted by permission of copyright owner. 

Low-energy electron diffraction has been used by Pitkethly and others to investigate the chemisorption of benzene, at pressures up to 10-7 Torr and at temperatures ranging from ambient to about 500°C, on the (100) (22), (110) (23,24) and (111) (22,24) faces of nickel single crystals. 

---