Reactions and mass transfer i nanostructured catalysts

多相反应普遍存在于大气化学等自然体系中，并广泛应用于精细化工、医药和能源等工业领域。当涉及到大分子甚至非常大的分子时，事情变得更加复杂。将这些类型的化合物转化为产品的传统方法远远不是最佳的。问题的核心是，在许多情况下，分子太大，无法放入目录的毛孔中。然后发生不希望发生的反应，降低了产品产量，增加了工业过程的环境负担。这些问题既存在于油砂等以石油为基础的燃料中，也存在于生物柴油等可再生燃料的生产中。在我的实验室里，我们正在研究使用纳米沸石为基础的催化剂来生产合成原油和从可再生油中生产生物柴油。虽然反应非常不同，但这两个系统的问题非常相似。对于纳米结构的天然沸石，有限的孔体积通常不是问题，因为活性中心在催化剂的表面。由于纳米结构催化剂的性质，外部孔体积可能非常高，因此非常活性。最终目标是更深入地了解这些大分子是如何与催化剂表面相互作用的，并利用这些知识来改进能源相关产品的生成，而对环境的影响更小。为了取得成功，我们必须合成该项目的三个不同的组成部分：反应动力学、化学和运输过程。

Multiphase reactions are ubiquitous and appear in natural systems such as atmospheric chemistry and in a wide variety of industrial applications in the fine chemical, pharmaceutical and energy industries. Things get even more complicated when large and even very large molecules are involved. Traditional approaches to transforming these types of compounds into products are far from optimum. At the heart of the problem is that in many cases, the molecules are too big to fit into the pores of the catalsyt. Undesirable reactions then occur and lessen the product yields and increase the environmental burden of the industrial process. These sorts of problems exist in both petroleum based fuels such as oilsands, and in the production of renewable fuels such as biodiesel. In my lab, we are investigating the use of nanostructured zeolite based catalysts for the production of both synthetic crude oil and biodiesel from renewable oils. While the reactions are very different, the issues for both of these systems is very similar. With the nanostructured natural zeolites, limited pore volume is generally not an issue because the active sites are on the surface of the catalyst. Due to the nature of the nanostructured catalyst, the external pore volumes can be very high and thus very active. The ultimate goal is to gain a deeper insight into how these large molecules interact with the surface of the catalyst and utilize this knowledge to improve the generation of energy related products with less impact to the environment. To be successful, we will have to synthesize three disparate components of the project: reaction kinetics, chemistry and transport processes.