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Valparaiso University

Summer Interdisciplinary Research Symposium

2019

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Propane Dehydrogenation Using Transition Metal Cluster Catalysts, Sarah E. Bradash, Andrew D. Hoisington, Stan A. Zygmunt, Louis Fadel Jul 2019

Propane Dehydrogenation Using Transition Metal Cluster Catalysts, Sarah E. Bradash, Andrew D. Hoisington, Stan A. Zygmunt, Louis Fadel

Summer Interdisciplinary Research Symposium

Our research seeks to determine the propane dehydrogenation (PDH) reaction pathways using various transition-metal cluster catalysts. We are studying the first step of the reaction, in which a C-H bond is broken. This has been previously shown to be the rate-limiting step of the PDH reaction. We are calculating the PDH activation energy (Ea) using the Vienna Ab-Initio Simulation Package (VASP) in conjunction with the nudged elastic band algorithm. Thus far, we have studied Pt, Ta, and Ni clusters ranging in size from 2-10 atoms. Our goal is to better understand the dependence of Ea on metal …