Book Synopsis Structure Sensitivity of Carbon-Nitrogen Ring Opening by :
Download or read book Structure Sensitivity of Carbon-Nitrogen Ring Opening written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ability to control fundamental properties (e.g., particle size, surface structure, and metal-oxide interface) in order to design highly selective heterogeneous catalysts would greatly reduce energy intensive separations. Particle size dependence (i.e., structure sensitivity) upon selectivity can now be examined with well defined nanoparticles (NPs) because of advances in synthetic chemistry. Colloidal chemistry has provided means for synthesizing monodisperse Pt NPs as small as (almost equal to)2 nm. Using a dendrimer templated approach, Pt NPs smaller than 1 nm--a new size regime for studying size induced effects in heterogeneous catalysis--can be synthesized (Scheme 1). In this contribution, we report that ring opening for pyrrole hydrogenation is distinctly different for Pt NPs smaller than 2 nm. This insight has not been demonstrated for hydrogenation of cyclic heteroatom bonds to the best of our knowledge. This finding adds fundamental insight into hydrodenitrogenation (HDN) chemistry, which is important for fuel processing and involves removal of N-containing organics. Advances in HDN catalysis are needed to meet new fuel quality regulations because N-containing organics inhibit hydrodesulfurization (HDS) through competitive adsorption and poison acid catalysts, which are used for downstream processing and as supports for HDS catalysts. Pyrrole was selected as the reactant because organics with 5-member N-containing rings are the most common components in fuel.