Engineering Commons^™

Electronic Effect Of Platinum Alloy Catalysts On Olefin Hydrogenation Kinetics, Colin Reedy, Jeff Miller, Stephen Purdy

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Dehydrogenation of alkanes is the first step in transforming light hydrocarbons into liquid fuels and chemicals. This process has traditionally used platinum alloys as catalysts. Alloys are used industrially because they have a greater selectivity than monometallic platinum. Alloying platinum with an inactive promoter modifies the crystalline structure of the surface (geometric effect), and the 5d electrons in platinum responsible for chemistry (electronic effect); both have been suggested to be primarily responsible for dehydrogenation selectivity in platinum alloys. Alloy catalysts have been synthesized using early 3d transition metal promoters with the same Pt₃M crystal structure. X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy …

Investigation Of The Effects Of Solid-State Treatments On The Structure And Mobility Of Copper In Zeolites, Jiayang Wu, Laura Wilcox, Rajamani Gounder

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Zeolites are microporous, aluminosilicate catalysts that play an important role in industrial applications as well as studies for the fundamental understanding of catalysts for emerging reactions of interest. The introduction of aluminum into the zeolite lattice introduces a negative charge on the framework that can be balanced with extra-framework cations. The control of the aluminum distribution and the choice of charge balancing cations allows for the ability to tailor the active sites to facilitate a desired reaction. This research focuses on studying copper active sites in zeolites. Copper oxide was used as a copper precursor to introduce copper ions in …

The Catalysis Of Delayed Petroleum Coking, Anya M. Heinimann, Robert Khakimov, Hyun-Tae Hwang, Enrico N. Martinez

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Due to the decreasing crude oil quality (heavier crudes and increasing contaminant concentrations) methods for upgrading residues from the refining process, such as coking, are becoming increasingly important. Delayed coking, a method by which residues are thermally cracked (large heavy molecules broken into smaller lighter molecules), produces liquid products and solid coke which can both be sold for further profit. In order to increase the amount of liquid products produced since they are the most value added product of the coking process catalysts (platinum on 0.5% alumina and nickel (skeletal),molybdenum promoted (1 wt%)) were tested to see how they would …

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 …