The Nuclearity of the Active Site for Methane to Methanol Conversion in Cu-Mordenite: A Quantitative Assessment.

The direct conversion of methane to methanol (MTM) is a reaction that has the potential to disrupt a great part of the synthesis gas-derived chemical industry. However, despite many decades of research, active enough catalysts and suitable processes for industrial application are still not available. Recently, several copper-exchanged zeolites have shown considerable activity and selectivity in the direct MTM reaction.

Methane to Methanol: Structure-Activity Relationships for Cu-CHA.

Cu-exchanged zeolites possess active sites that are able to cleave the C-H bond of methane at temperatures ≤200 °C, enabling its selective partial oxidation to methanol. Herein we explore this process over Cu-SSZ-13 materials. We combine activity tests and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to thoroughly investigate the influence of reaction parameters and material elemental composition on the productivity and Cu speciation during the key process steps.

Large zeolite H-ZSM-5 crystals as models for the methanol-to-hydrocarbons process: bridging the gap between single-particle examination and bulk catalyst analysis.

The catalytic, deactivation, and regeneration characteristics of large coffin-shaped H-ZSM-5 crystals were investigated during the methanol-to-hydrocarbons (MTH) reaction at 350 and 500 °C. Online gas-phase effluent analysis and examination of retained material thereof were used to explore the bulk properties of large coffin-shaped zeolite H-ZSM-5 crystals in a fixed-bed reactor to introduce them as model catalysts for the MTH reaction. These findings were related to observations made at the individual particle level by using polarization-dependent UV-visible microspectroscopy and mass spectrometric techniques after reaction in an in situ microspectroscopy reaction cell.