The importance of solid catalysts for converting petroand bulk chemicals is reflected in the sheer magnitude of their market size: catalysts sales topped nine billion dollars in 2009. This large value mirrors also the increasing academic interest in heterogeneous catalysis research. As far as bulk chemicals (such as ethene, propene, and their derivatives) are concerned, there is a strong demand...

Heat and mass transfer problem in a fixed-bed tubular reactor is one of the major concerns in the chemical engineering. The two dimensional axial plug flow model was used for a water gas shift reactor to compare heat conduction or mass diffusion with convective effect. In the case of fast fluid flow in highly permeable catalyst-bed, convective heat transfer was dominant compared to heat conduct...

To understand how hierarchically structured functional materials operate, analytical tools are needed that can reveal small structural and chemical details in large sample volumes. Often, a single method alone is not sufficient to get a complete picture of processes happening at multiple length scales. Here we present a correlative approach combining three-dimensional X-ray imaging techniques a...

Sound propagation i gas-filled capillary-tube-type orous media was investigated. The capillary tubes were taken to be nominally straight with very small pores in the walls of the capillary tubes. The complex wave number and the characteristic mpedance of such media were evaluated. Application to ceramic samples having capillary pores with square cross sections and porous walls is developed as a...

Porous nitrogen-rich carbon (POF-C-1000) that was synthesized by using a porous organic framework (POF) as a self-sacrificing host template in a nanocasting process possessed a high degree of graphitization in an ordered structural arrangement with large domains and well-ordered arrays of carbon sheets. POF-C-1000 exhibits favorable electrocatalytic activity for the oxygen-reduction reaction (O...

In situ solid-state NMR methodologies have been used to investigate the photocatalytic oxidation of ethanol (CH3CH2OH) over a series of SnO2-based photocatalysts. The adsorption of ethanol on commercially available SnO2 powder was studied using both cross-polarization 13C NMR and REDOR experiments, and showed the formation of two surface ethanol species, hydrogen-bonded ethanol at surface hydro...

A novel triphenylphosphine-based porous polymer (TPDB) with a high Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area was synthesized through Friedel-Crafts alkylation of triphenylphosphine and α-dibromo-p-xylene. Then, the functional hydroxyl groups were successfully grafted onto the polymer framework by post modification of TPDB with 3-bromo-1-propanol (BP) and triethanolamine (TEA). The resulting sam...

High temperature ceramics with porosity on multiple length scales offer great promise in high temperature catalytic applications for their high surface area and low flow resistance in combination with thermal and chemical stability. We have developed a bottom-up approach to functional, porous, high-temperature ceramics structured on eight distinct length scales integrating functional Pt nanopar...

Tailoring the morphology of Pt nanocrystals (NCs) is of great concern for their enhancement in catalytic activity and durability. In this article, a novel synthetic strategy is developed to selectively prepare porous dendritic Pt NCs with different structures for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) assisted by NH3 gas and halides (F(-), Cl(-), Br(-)). The NH3 gas plays critical roles on tuning the ...

Sodium borohydride (NaBH4) hydrogen storage systems offer many advantages for hydrogen storage applications. The physical processes inside a NaBH4 packed bed reactor involve multi-component and multi-phase flow and multi-mode heat and mass transfer. These processes are also coupled with reaction kinetics. To guide reactor design and optimization, a reactor model involving all of these processes...