Multiscale Approach to Catalyst Design

Some examples for NMR techniques that have been used for investigating catalytic reactors (most of which will be discussed in this chapter) and the corresponding length scales which they probe are as follows  

In the past two decades, 129Xe NMR has been employed as a useful technique for the characterization of the internal void space of nanoporous materials. In particular, the xenon chemical shift has been demonstrated to be very sensitive to the local environment of the nuclei and to depend strongly on the pore size and also on the pressure [4—6], Assuming a macroscopic inhomogeneity resulting from a distribution of adsorption site concentrations, 129Xe NMR spectra of xenon in zeolites have been calculated, and properties such as line widths, shapes as well as their dependence on xenon pressure can be reproduced qualitatively. A fully quantitative analysis, however, remains difficult due to the different contributions to the xenon line shift. (See Chapter 5.3 for a more detailed description of Xe spectroscopy for the characterization of porous media.) 

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