The hydrogenation of nitrobenzene to form aniline is a large-scale industrial process performed using a variety of heterogeneous catalysts. One variant of the process involves the application of alumina-supported Pd catalysts. Although several 0.3 wt% Pd/alumina formulations exhibit high aniline selectivity (ca. 98%), different grades of these catalysts favour different impurities. It is observed that the impurities arise from different reaction pathways depending on the provenance of the catalyst. In order to investigate whether the origins of impurity formation are connected to catalyst structure, a series of Pd catalysts active for this reaction have been characterised by a variety of techniques: chemisorption measurements, X-Ray Diffraction, Transmission Electron Microscopy, Temperature-Programmed Desorption and Infrared spectroscopy. The low metal loading industrial grade catalysts are challenging to characterise and required a degree of analytical refinement. Temperature-programmed infrared measurements of the probe molecule carbon monoxide revealed morphological and energetic information that could be correlated with catalytic performance. This information constitutes part of a valuable feedback loop that enables specifications for the next generation of ultra-selective nitrobenzene hydrogenation catalysts to be determined.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:650349 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Morisse, Clément |
| Publisher | University of Glasgow |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6384/ |
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