Sulfur dioxide heterogeneous catalysis

In furnaces using residual oils, heterogeneous catalysis is a possible route for the conversion of S02 to S03. Sulfur dioxide and molecular oxygen will react catalytically on steel surfaces and vanadium pentoxide (deposited from vanadium compounds in the fuel). Catalytic reactions may also occur at lower temperatures where the equilibrium represented by reaction (8.94) favors the formation of S03. 

Heterogeneous catalysis also occurs in the oxidation of gaseous sulfur dioxide to gaseous sulfur trioxide. This process is especially interesting because it illustrates both positive and negative consequences of chemical catalysis. 

Heterogeneous catalysis is also utilized in the catalytic converters in automobile exhaust systems. The exhaust gases, containing compounds such as nitric oxide, carbon monoxide, and unburned hydrocarbons, are passed through a converter containing beads of solid catalyst (see Fig. 12.16). The catalyst promotes the conversion of carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons to carbon dioxide and water, and nitric oxide to nitrogen gas to lessen the environmental impact of the exhaust gases. However, this beneficial catalysis can, unfortunately, be accompanied by the unwanted catalysis of the oxidation of SO2 to SO3, which reacts with the moisture present to form sulfuric acid. 

However, in the years after Ostwald, his former students and collaborators dominated catalysis in Germany. We can mention Bodenstein who put the study of the kinetics of heterogeneous catalysis essentially in its modern state. The Ostwald school made little contribution to mechanism, but it adhered to a view surprisingly close to that of Faraday. The famous paper of Bodenstein and Fink of 1907 interpreted the kinetics of the oxidation of sulfur dioxide on platinum in terms of the diffusion of sulfur dioxide or oxygen through a polymolecular layer of adsorbed material. In extreme cases, accord with the observed inhibition by sulfur trioxide would have required adsorbed layers so thick that they could have been pared with a razor. 

The first major use of heterogeneous catalysis in a modern chemical process was the contact sulfuric acid process developed by Kneitsch and Rrauss at BASF around 1900. They used a platinized asbestos catalyst to convert sulfur dioxide to... 

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