Li/MgO as catalyst for coupling of methane, single source precursor route for well defined Li/MgO


Arndt S., Heitz S., Otremba T., Laugel G., AKSU Y., Driess M., ...More

43th Annual Meeting of the German Catalysis Scientists, Weimar, Germany, 10 - 12 March 2010, pp.151, (Full Text)

  • Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
  • City: Weimar
  • Country: Germany
  • Page Numbers: pp.151
  • Akdeniz University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

The main component of natural gas is methane, with resources rivaling those of crude oil. Therefore the economical interest in the conversion of methane into products for chemical industry is big. The oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) is a direct way to achieve this aim, but this process has not reached commercial application. An often investigated catalyst is Li/MgO. It is also a suitable system to perform surface science experiments or quantum chemical calculations. This is not possible for many other catalysts which are active in the OCM. However, the real structure of Li/MgO, the nature of the active center and the structure – activity – relationship remains unclear despite of all the research which was done.

 

The application of Li/MgO prepared via single source precursors seemed very promising to us, as this procedure allows a controlled preparation of this catalyst, which was not possible before. For comparative reasons we also investigated Li/MgO prepared by other procedures. The catalysts were tested in a temperature range between 550 to 800°C with a with a feed gas of CH4/O2/N2= 4/1/4 at space velocities of 24000 – 72000 cm3/g*h. Initially the catalysts showed a high activity, but it decreased significantly within a very short period of time. Since the catalyst stability is a crucial point for any application, the stability of Li/MgO was also investigated as authoritative data are not reported in the literature. Under reaction conditions, even under the mildest reaction conditions possible, none of the catalysts was found stable and even after 10 days, no catalyst reached a steady state condition.