Engineering Commons^™

Scaling Relationships Across Chemically Related Adsorbates For Fast Screening Of Alloy Catalysts For Propane Dehydrogenation, Anne Esther Serban, Ranga Rohit Seemakurthi, Brandon C. Bukowski, Jeffrey Greeley

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

A catalyst is a material which speeds up the rate of a specific reaction. A reaction that is of significant importance to the chemical industry is the selective transformations of light alkanes (ethane, propane), which are largely available in shale gas, to olefins. These olefins can then be converted into higher-value chemicals, materials, and fuels. However, there are several undesired reactions that take place alongside the main dehydrogenation reaction, so a catalyst of high selectivity is desired. Apart from the industrially used PtSn catalyst, work by our experimental collaborators has shown that various other Pt and Pd alloys (In, Zn) …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Microporous And Mesoporous Catalysts For Shale Gas Upgrading, Danesh Contractor, Ravi Joshi, Rajamani Gounder

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The petroleum industry is gradually shifting from using naphtha to ethane as its feedstock and new ethane steam crackers are being built. Using ethane as a feedstock produces more ethene and less co-products such as propene, aromatics and C4 alkenes. Thus, the shift in feedstock will reduce the availability of these co-products. Developing methods for the interconversion of alkenes, and specifically using ethene as a reactant, can solve this problem.

This project focuses on synthesis and characterization of zeolites with the BEA framework topology, and their nickel exchanged versions as potential ethene dimerization catalysts. In future work, these materials will …