Heterogeneous Catalysts

It should be mentioned that the Contributors of the different chapters in the book are themselves among the most promising Emerging and Pioneering Researchers in the field of heterogeneous catalysis. We capitalized on that point in our book design to allow each Contributor to articulate the advancement of his/her own technique in a semitutorial manner that can be appreciated by the target readers. We strive to preserve a delicate balance between readability and articulating the complexity of the advanced techniques. In that sense, we present the content in a less mathematical (in a semiquantitative form, as much as we could) but comprehensible setting as the first step to inculcate interest and inspiration among beginners. With some patience, self‐learning is highly possible, following which readers should have the ability to pursue more quantitative references of specific techniques. With the heightened expectation of “cross skills” among the new generation of catalyst researchers, this book shall come in handy for readers to gain appreciation on some of the most advanced techniques before deciding to specialize in some of them. In fact, we hope that the book would serve as a platform to inspire readers to potentially develop their own original or hybrid techniques in a wider effort to tackling the grand challenges using heterogeneous catalysts.

Finally, we take the opportunity to thank Emerging and Pioneering Researchers who have contributed to this book, its vision and purpose. It has been a massive effort that took us more than three years to put together this book, and we thank the Contributors for their patience.

Wey Yang Teoh

University of Malaya, Malaysia

23 November 2020

Atsushi Urakawa

Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

23 November 2020

Yun Hau Ng

City University of Hong Kong, S.A.R.

23 November 2020

Patrick Sit

City University of Hong Kong, S.A.R.

23 November 2020

Wey Yang Teoh1,2

1 University of Malaya, Centre for Separation Science and Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2 The University of New South Wales, School of Chemical Engineering, Sydney 2052, Australia

The modern discovery of heterogeneous catalysts stretches as far back as 1800 when Joseph Priestley and Martinus van Marum reported the dehydrogenation of alcohol over a heated metal catalyst, although not too much was thought about the role of the metal catalyst at that time except as a heating source. Then in 1813, Louis Jacques Thénard of École Polytechnique in Paris discovered the decomposition of ammonia to nitrogen and hydrogen over “red‐hot metals” and recognized that the phenomenon was due to some catalytic reaction [1, 2]. The concept was followed up by Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution of London who, in 1817, reported the flameless catalytic combustion of coal gas and air over heated platinum wire producing bright white ignition. Their results were reproducible when using palladium, but not on copper, silver, iron, gold, and zinc [1, 3]. These experiments made clear that there was some form of catalytic role associated with the different metals. The discovery soon became the basis for the invention of the coal mine safety lamp, also known as the Davy lamp – although mysteriously but rather practically, the use of inefficient steel iron rather than platinum gauze became the standard for Davy lamps. At around the same time, Thénard and Pierre Dulong found that the catalytic ammonia decomposition rates decrease in the following order: iron, copper, silver, gold, and platinum, marking the first recognition of the kinetics of different metal catalysts. The importance of catalytic surface area, as we now know to be one of the most important governing factors in heterogeneous catalysis, was discovered by Edmund Davy (cousin to Humphry Davy) at the University College Cork in the 1820s, who found that finely divided platinum could catalyze the oxidation of alcohol as well as the oxidation of hydrogen at room temperature [4].

In 1831, a little‐known gentleman by the name of Peregrine Phillips, Jr., patented sulfuric acid production by oxidizing sulfur dioxide in air over platinum packed in porcelain tubes heated to “strong yellow heat”. The resultant sulfur trioxide forms sulfuric acid fume upon contact with water, hence earning its name as the Contact Process [5]. Ironically, despite the high importance of this catalytic process, not much is known about Phillips except that he was son of a tailor and was born in Bristol [1]. A large‐scale manufacturing of sulfuric acid using the Contact Process and platinum catalyst was realized many years later in 1875 by Rudolph Messel, a German‐born and naturalized English industrial chemist. Messel himself was very much involved in the studies of the kinetics as well as the problematic poisoning of platinum catalysts by arsenic trioxide. In 1913, BASF was granted patents on a new catalyst based on the more versatile supported vanadium pentoxide and alkali oxide on porous silica [6, 7]. The first manufacturing plant based on this new catalyst was commissioned in 1915. Improvement in the activity of the supported vanadium pentoxide catalyst through the addition of potassium sulfate promoter was invented in Germany and the United States between 1916 and 1919. It was only in 1988 that Haldor Topsoe and Anders Nielsen revealed that the addition of cesium or rubidium promoter, rather than potassium, was more efficient in enhancing the activity of sulfur dioxide oxidation. With a typical lifetime of up to 10 years, the industrial catalyst composition for the Contact Process has been largely unchanged even to this day [8].

Going back to 1838, just a few years after the discovery of the Contact Process, Frédéric Kuhlmann discovered the production of nitric acid from the oxidation of ammonia in air over platinum sponge at 300 °C and filed a patent on this [9]. Based on the discovery, he later founded the Etablissements Kuhlmann company, which still exists to this day as part of the Pechiney SA. Despite being an important chemical commodity for the use in fertilizers and explosives manufacturing, the interest in Kuhlmann reaction was not immediately of interest since Chile saltpetre (a naturally occurring mineral of alkali metal nitrate precursor found at the Atacama desert repository) was widely available. In his vision, Kuhlmann stated that “If in fact the transformation of ammonia to nitric acid in the presence of platinum and air is not economical, the time may come when this process will constitute a profitable industry.”

Indeed, the Kuhlmann reaction picked up interest toward the end of the century as part of the solution to “The Nitrogen Problem.” In 1901 and building on Kuhlmann's earlier findings, Wilhelm Ostwald of the University of Leipzig investigated the production of nitric acid using supported platinum on asbestos before moving to coiled platinum strips that gave higher conversion [9]. A large‐scale nitric acid manufacturing plant went into operation at Gerthe in 1908 with an output of 3 tons nitric acid per day using 50 g of corrugated platinum catalyst of 2 cm wide. Given the short catalyst lifetime of no more than six weeks, it was soon realized to be a costly operation. To tackle the problem, Karl Kaiser of Technische Hochschule, Charlottenburg, developed the platinum gauze catalyst in 1909, consisting of 0.06 mm diameter wires woven to 1050 mesh/cm 2, that gave a higher surface‐to‐bulk ratio and uninterrupted production of nitric acid of up to six months [9]. But because the source of ammonia at that time was derived from gas works liquors containing impurities such as arsenic and sulfur that deactivate the platinum catalyst, the really large industrial‐scale production was only possible after the implementation of the Haber–Bosch process that provided clean ammonia. The present‐day nitric acid catalyst is based on rhodium–platinum gauze (5–10% Rh) [10].