Palladium activation energy

Table III lists the kinetic equations for the reactions studied by Scholten and Konvalinka when the hydride was the catalyst involved. Uncracked samples of the hydride exhibit far greater activation energy than does the a-phase, i.e. 12.5 kcal/mole, in good accord with 11 kcal/mole obtained by Couper and Eley for a wire preexposed to the atomic hydrogen. The exponent of the power at p amounts to 0.64 no matter which one of the reactions was studied and under what conditions of p and T the kinetic experiments were carried out. According to Scholten and Konvalinka this is a unique quantitative factor common to the reactions studied on palladium hydride as catalyst. It constitutes a point of departure for the authors proposal for the mechanism of the para-hydrogen conversion reaction catalyzed by the hydride phase.

Fig. 8. Arrhenius plots for the formic acid decomposition on palladium foil (1) and small pieces of this foil (2) at a higher temperature range, when hydrogen evolving as a product of the reaction was absorbed by Pd and transformed into the /3-Pd-H hydride phase. At the lower temperature range the reaction proceeds on the a-Pd-H phase, with a higher activation energy when the foil was hydrogen pretreated (2a), and a lower activation energy for a degassed Pd foil (3a). After Brill and Watson (57).

Gold forms a continuous series of solid solutions with palladium, and there is no evidence for the existence of a miscibility gap. Also, the catalytic properties of the component metals are very different, and for these reasons the Pd-Au alloys have been popular in studies of the electronic factor in catalysis. The well-known paper by Couper and Eley (127) remains the most clearly defined example of a correlation between catalytic activity and the filling of d-band vacancies. The apparent activation energy for the ortho-parahydrogen conversion over Pd-Au wires wras constant on Pd and the Pd-rich alloys, but increased abruptly at 60% Au, at which composition d-band vacancies were considered to be just filled. Subsequently, Eley, with various collaborators, has studied a number of other reactions over the same alloy wires, e.g., formic acid decomposition 128), CO oxidation 129), and N20 decomposition ISO). These results, and the extent to which they support the d-band theory, have been reviewed by Eley (1). We shall confine our attention here to the chemisorption of oxygen and the decomposition of formic acid, winch have been studied on Pd-Au alloy films. 

We have, then, another example of an alloy and reaction in which the simple d-band theory has to be modified in a rather speculative way in order to explain experimental results. Actually, this is unnecessary for the formic acid reaction if we take the more recent value of about 0.4 for the number of d-band holes per palladium atom. This is not a satisfactory solution, because it is then difficult to explain the low activation energy for the parahydrogen conversion on Pd-Au alloys containing between 40 and 60% Pd. 

When small amounts of rhodium were added to palladium, the activation energy E, increased from initial values of 12-14 kcal/mole to a maximum beyond 10% Rh of more than 20 kcal/mole. Beyond 60% Rh, the activation energy again increased rapidly from a minimum to 25 kcal/mole at 97.7% Rh but was 5 kcal/mole less when the reaction was carried out over pure rhodium. Values of the pre-exponential term, A, in the Arrhenius... 

Under optimum reaction conditions (See Table IV.), selectivity to linear dimer is controlled by the choice of temperature, solvent and tertiary phosphine. Toluene and tetrahydrofuran are the best solvents. Temperatures between 25 to 60 C with a triphenyl or tributylphosphine/palladium acetate catalyst give linear dimer selectivities in the 80 s. At 25 C in toluene, a palladium acetate/tributylphosphine catalyst gave 98.7% conversion and 89.6% linear, 4.7% branched, 1.9% cyclic, and 3.8% heavies selectivity. The linear dimerization reaction was second order in diene with a 3.6 Kcal/mole activation energy. 

The high MIBK selectivity over the palladium catalysts suggested that the hydrogenation of MO was facile and that the overall rate-determining step may lie in the aldol part of the sequence rather than with the hydrogenation. If this was the case the case then we may have expected to have similar activation energies for the formation of MO and MIBK. In a previous study (II) an activation energy of 23+4 kj.mof was calculated for the formation of MO from... 

Nickel shows some activity at low temperatures approximately equivalent to the activity of rhodium, but normal catalytic behavior with a constant activation energy is observed only at substantially higher temperatures similar to those necessary for activity with palladium. 

Fig. 17. Activation energy for parahydrogen conversion on palladium-gold alloys. The broken line denotes the paramagnetic susceptibility in arbitrary units. [Couper, A., and Eley, D. D., Discusaions Faraday Soc. 8, 172 (1950).]...

Several mechanisms were proposed to interpret bond shift isomerization, each associated with some unique feature of the reacting alkane or the metal. Palladium, for example, is unreactive in the isomerization of neopentane, whereas neopentane readily undergoes isomerization on platinum and iridium. Kinetic studies also revealed that the activation energy for chain branching and the reverse process is higher than that of methyl shift and isomerization of neopentane. 

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