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Syan's Project Page - RISE summer 2004 |
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Intern: Siyan Zhang, UCSB
Mentor: Ju Chou
Faculty Supervisor: Eric McFarland
Department: Chemical Engineering |
COUPLING REACTION OF PROPYLENE CATALYZED BY PURE Pd NANOCLUSTERS
It has been found that palladium (Pd) can catalyze the cyclization of
acetylene on Pd/MgO thin film and bimetallic Pd/W surface. The cyclization of
three acetylene molecules leads to the formation of benzene. The objective of
this project was to use micelle encapsulation to synthesize pure Pd nanoclusters
and to investigate the effects of various temperature and isotopes on the
catalytic activities of Pd supported on TiO2. The catalytic activities were
studied through a propylene reaction in the presence of both oxygen and hydrogen.
The products included acetone, propane, carbon dioxide, and benzene. The
experiment primarily focused on the discovery that a carbon-carbon single bond,
which has a bond-energy of 348 kJ/mole, could be broken at an apparently low
temperature of 70ºC. The main focus of this research was on the coupling
reaction of propylene which forms benzene. Certain tools and techniques were
utilized in order to obtain accurate data including a mass spectrometer, gas
flow controller, gas residual analyzer (RGA), and nuclear magnetic resonance
NMR). Finally, the Pd catalyst was characterized by a transmission electron
microscope (TEM) to measure the morphology and size of the nanoclusters.
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