Nickel catalyst surface reaction

A process based on a nickel catalyst, either supported or Raney type, is described ia Olin Mathieson patents (26,27). The reduction is carried out ia a continuous stirred tank reactor with a concentric filter element built iato the reactor so that the catalyst remains ia the reaction 2one. Methanol is used as a solvent. Reaction conditions are 2.4—3.5 MPa (350—500 psi), 120—140°C. Keeping the catalyst iaside the reactor iacreases catalyst lifetime by maintaining a hydrogen atmosphere on its surface at all times and minimises handling losses. Periodic cleaning of the filter element is required. 

A selective poison is one that binds to the catalyst surface in such a way that it blocks the catalytic sites for one kind of reaction but not those for another. Selective poisons are used to control the selectivity of a catalyst. For example, nickel catalysts supported on alumina are used for selective removal of acetjiene impurities in olefin streams (58). The catalyst is treated with a continuous feed stream containing sulfur to poison it to an exacdy controlled degree that does not affect the activity for conversion of acetylene to ethylene but does poison the activity for ethylene hydrogenation to ethane. Thus the acetylene is removed and the valuable olefin is not converted. 

Replacement of halides with deuterium gas in the presence of a surface catalyst is a less useful reaction, due mainly to the poor isotopic purity of the products. This reaction has been used, however, for the insertion of a deuterium atom at C-7 in various esters of 3j -hydroxy-A -steroids, since it gives less side products resulting from double bond migration. Thus, treatment of the 7a- or 7j5-bromo derivatives (206) with deuterium gas in the presence of 5% palladium-on-calcium carbonate, or Raney nickel catalyst, followed by alkaline hydrolysis, gives the corresponding 3j3-hydroxy-7( -di derivatives (207), the isotope content of which varies from 0.64 to 1.18 atoms of deuterium per mole. The isotope composition and the stereochemistry of the deuterium have not been rigorously established. 

Vanadium also promotes dehydrogenation reactions, but less than nickel. Vanadium s contribution to hydrogen yield is 20% to 50% of nickel s contribution, but vanadium is a more severe poison. Unlike nickel, vanadium does not stay on the surface of the catalyst. Instead, it migrates to the inner (zeolite) part of the catalyst and destroys the zeolite crystal structure. Catalyst surface area and activity are permanently lost. 

The synthesis of methane from C02 and hydrogen was studied by Binder and White (11) over a reduced nickel catalyst (Harshaw Ni-88). The surface reaction between the C02 and hydrogen appeared to be rate controlling. The rate of reaction can be correlated by either of the following rather awkward equations ... 

Nickel. As a methanation catalyst, nickel is presently preeminent. It is relatively cheap, it is very active, and it is the most selective to methane of all the metals. Its main drawback is that it is easily poisoned by sulfur, a fault common to all the known active methanation catalysts. The nickel content of commercial nickel catalysts is 25-77 wt %. Nickel is dispersed on a high-surface-area, refractory support such as alumina or kieselguhr. Some supports inhibit the formation of carbon by Reaction 4. Chromia-supported nickel has been studied by Czechoslovakian and Russian investigators. 

The fluorination of CF3CH2CI into CF3CH2F over chromium oxides is accompanied by a dehydrofluorination reaction (formation mainly of CF2=CHC1). This dehydrofluorination is responsible for the deactivation of the catalyst. A study of the dehydrofluorination reaction of CF3CH2CI proves that the reaction is favoured when the degree of fluorination of chromium oxide increases. Consequently it would be favoured on strong acid sites. Adding nickel to chromium oxide decreases the formation of alkenes and increases the selectivity for fluorination while the total activity decreases. Two kinds of active sites would be present at the catalyst surface. The one would be active for both the reactions of dehydrofluorination and of fluorination, the other only for the fluorination reaction. 

When we first contemplated thermochemical products available from Glu, a search of the literature revealed no studies expressly directed at hydrogenation to a specific product. Indeed, the major role that Glu plays in hydrogenation reactions is to act as an enantioselectivity enhancer (17,18). Glu (or a number of other optically active amino acids) is added to solutions containing Raney nickel, supported nickel, palladium, or ruthenium catalysts and forms stereoselective complexes on the catalyst surface, leading to enantioselective hydrogenation of keto-groups to optically active alcohols. Under the reaction conditions used, no hydrogenation of Glu takes place. 

It should be observed that curve C (Fig. 31) which characterizes the steady activity of the catalyst surface may be directly compared to activity curves obtained by other techniques. The evolutions of heat as a function of time produced by the reaction of doses of reaction mixture at the surface of four different nickel oxide catalysts are, for instance, plotted on Fig. 32. These curves are very similar indeed to the kinetic curves obtained with the same catalysts in a classical static reactor (Fig. 33) (8). 

Steam reforming is a heterogeneously catalyzed process, with nickel catalyst deposited throughout a preformed porous support. It is empirically observed in the industry, that conversion is proportional to the geometric surface area of the catalyst particles, rather than the internal pore area. This suggests that the particle behaves as an egg-shell type, as if all the catalytic activity were confined to a thin layer at the external surface. It has been demonstrated by conventional reaction-diffusion particle modelling that this behaviour is due to... 

Shen et al. (142) used an isotopic transient technique and XPS to investigate the partial oxidation of CH4 to synthesis gas on a Ni/Al203 catalyst at 973 K. The results show that CH4 can decompose easily and quickly to give H2 and Ni C on the reduced catalyst, and that Ni vC can react rapidly with NiO, formed by the oxidation of nickel by 02 to give CO or C02, depending on the relative concentration of Ni,C around NiO on the catalyst surface. The conclusion drawn by the authors (142) was not only that H2 and CO are primary products in the partial oxidation of CH4, but also that most of the CO2 is also the primary product of the surface reaction between Ni,C and NiO. In contrast, the kinetics results of Verykios et al. (143) indicated that the reaction on the Ni/La203 catalyst mainly takes place via the sequence of total oxidation to CO2 and H20, followed by... 

Many promoters have been used to improve the performance of Ni/Al203 catalysts. The effect of the basic oxides of Na, K, Mg, and Ca on Ni/Al203 was examined by a number of authors (178,203,211 -213). They found that these added oxides markedly decrease the carbon deposition. The kinetics results showed that the added metal oxides changed the reaction order in CH4 from negative to positive and that in C02 from positive to negative. This observation implies that the surface of a nickel catalyst incorporating basic metal oxides is abundant in adsorbed C02, whereas the surfaces devoid of these oxides are abundant in adsorbed CH4 (178). The coverage of nickel with C02 is most likely unfavorable to CH4 decomposition... 

Surface modification of skeletal nickel with tartaric acid produced catalysts capable of enantiose-lective hydrogenation [85-89], The modification was carried out after the formation of the skeletal nickel catalyst and involved adsorption of tartaric acid on the surface of the nickel. Reaction conditions strongly influenced the enantioselectivity of the catalyst. Both Ni° and Ni2+ have been detected on the modified surface [89]. This technique has already been expanded to other modified skeletal catalysts for example, modification with oxazaborolidine compounds for reduction of ketones to chiral alcohols [90],... 

Carbon monoxide oxidation is a relatively simple reaction, and generally its structurally insensitive nature makes it an ideal model of heterogeneous catalytic reactions. Each of the important mechanistic steps of this reaction, such as reactant adsorption and desorption, surface reaction, and desorption of products, has been studied extensively using modem surface-science techniques.17 The structure insensitivity of this reaction is illustrated in Figure 10.4. Here, carbon dioxide turnover frequencies over Rh(l 11) and Rh(100) surfaces are compared with supported Rh catalysts.3 As with CO hydrogenation on nickel, it is readily apparent that, not only does the choice of surface plane matters, but also the size of the active species.18-21 Studies of this system also indicated that, under the reaction conditions of Figure 10.4, the rhodium surface was covered with CO. This means that the reaction is limited by the desorption of carbon monoxide and the adsorption of oxygen. 

The single crystal results are compared in Fig. 2 with three sets of data taken from Ref. 13 for nickel supported on alumina, a high surface area catalyst. This comparison shows extraordinary similarities in kinetic data taken under nearly identical conditions. Thus, for the Hj-CO reaction over nickel, there is no significant variation in the specific reaction rates or the activation energy as the catalyst changes from small metal particles to bulk single crystals. These data provide convincing evidence that the methanation reaction rate is indeed structure insensitive on nickel catalysts. 

Conversely, the presence of surface formate species retards the decomposition reaction on supported nickel catalysts (82). 

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