Reactions and mass transfer i nanostructured catalysts

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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.