Methanol-Assisted Autocatalysis in Catalytic Methanol Synthesis.

Catalytic methanol synthesis is one of the major processes in the chemical industry and may grow in importance, as methanol produced from CO and sustainably derived H are envisioned to play an important role as energy carriers in a future low-CO -emission society. However, despite the widespread use, the reaction mechanism and the nature of the active sites are not fully understood. Here we report that methanol synthesis at commercially applied conditions using the industrial Cu/ZnO/Al O catalyst is dominated by a methanol-assisted autocatalytic reaction mechanism.

Structural dynamics of an iron molybdate catalyst under redox cycling conditions studied with in situ multi edge XAS and XRD.

The structural dynamics and phase transformations of an iron molybdate catalyst with excess molybdenum trioxide (Mo/Fe = 2.0) were studied during redox cycling of the catalyst using in situ multi-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) at the Mo K-edge (transmission mode) and Fe K-edge (fluorescence mode) in combination with X-ray diffraction (XRD). X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) analysis showed that heating under reducing conditions with methanol up to 400 °C produced MoO and FeMoO.