Highly dispersed gallium-based catalysts for the non-oxidative dehydrogenation of methanol to formaldehyde and hydrogen

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Formaldehyde is one of the most important industrial chemicals which is mainly used for the production of resins or as a building block for the synthesis of other chemical compounds. The direct dehydrogenation of methanol is of great interest, because it results in water-free formaldehyde and hydrogen as a second valuable product. Although gallium oxide-based catalysts have been shown to display an excellent initial performance for methanol dehydrogenation in terms of activity and selectivity, their deactivation rate is also relatively high. This is a well-known problem which is encountered frequently with dehydrogenation catalysts, e. g. for propane dehydrogenation. Deactivation of these catalysts is typically due to coking and structural changes. The elimination of these detrimental processes would provide a new type of promising Ga-based catalysts. Since their application in methanol dehydrogenation is rather new, their properties with respect to this reaction will be thoroughly investigated by a comprehensive combination of bulk- and surface-sensitive methods. A research strategy is proposed that aims both at the characterization of the active sites and at tackling the deactivation problems. A systematic catalyst design will be applied to obtain efficiently promoted GaOx/SiO2 and CuxGayOz catalysts, and transient kinetic investigations will be performed to improve their regeneration.