Ostwald process pollution

Platinum also is used extensively as a catalyst in hydrogenation, dehydrogenation, oxidation, isomerization, carbonylation, and hydrocracking. Also, it is used in organic synthesis and petroleum refining. Like palladium, platinum also exhibits remarkable abdity to absorb hydrogen. An important application of platinum is in the catalytic oxidation of ammonia in Ostwald s process in the manufacture of nitric acid. Platinum is installed in the catalytic converters in automobile engines for pollution control. 

Catalysis refers to the phenomenon by which the rate of a chemical reaction is accelerated by a snbstance (the catalyst) not appreciably consnmed in the process. The term catalysis was coined by Berzelins in 1835 and scientifically defined by Ostwald in 1895, but applications based on catalysis can be traced back to thousands of years ago with the discovery of fermentation to produce wine and beer. Nowadays, catalysts are used in 80% of all chemical industrial processes, and create annual global sales of about 1500 billion dollars and contribute directly or indirectly to approximately 35% of the world s GDP. Catalysis is central to a myriad of applications, including the manufacture of commodity, fine, specialty, petro-, and agro- chemicals as well as the production of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, foods, and polymers. Catalysis is also an important component in new processes for the generation of clean energy, and in the protection of the enviromnent both by abating environmental pollutants and by providing alternative cleaner chemical synthetic procedures. 

In a second example, we examine reactions that relate to the Ostwald oxidation process, where NH3 is converted to NO with high selectivity. The reaction is typically run at high temperatures of around 1100 K over Pt/Rh alloy catalysts. The NO that forms is subsequently converted into nitric acid via a series of consecutive reaction steps. At lower temperatures, ammonia reacts to form Ng and NgO instead. The low-temperature conversion of ammonia to N2 would be much more desirable in that it would lower energy costs and, in addition, replace NO, an atmospheric pollutant, with N2, which is environmentally benign. We will describe here the low-temperature catalytic conversion of ammonia to form N2. For a review of high-temperature oxidation, in which coupling with gas-phase radical chemistry plays an important role, we refer to Ref. [50]. 

After investigating the electrochemical process first described by Sir William Grove in 1839, Ostwald in 1894 predicted that the twentieth century would become the Age of Electrochemical Combustion, with the replacement of steam Rankine cycle heat engines by much more efficient, pollution-free fuel cells (8. ... 

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