Development of a novel gallium nitride based catalyst for the direct non-oxidative methane aromatization

加拿大是世界上最大的化学品和塑料制造国之一。塑料和化学品的生产需要重要的基础材料，这些材料通常来自石油原料。石油储量的减少、地缘政治问题以及我们丰富的天然气和页岩气资源已经改变了我们利用甲烷的努力。在商业上，甲烷通过间接氧化过程转化为化学品，效率低，资本成本高，CO2排放量高。而甲烷直接无氧芳构化制苯则是一种更加经济环保的方法。然而，由于甲烷中的高C-H键强度和快速催化剂失活，该路线非常具有挑战性。这个NSERC CRD项目将遵循催化剂和反应工程相结合的方法来解决热力学和动力学约束。详细地说，我们将集中在新型氮化镓材料，表现出高的热和光催化活性对甲烷转化为苯使用新的膜反应器技术。本研究旨在探讨催化剂合成与催化剂性能之间的关系，以及结构与催化活性之间的基本关系，这是不太清楚的。除了实验之外，还将进行全面的动力学研究，以确定反应途径和相应的动力学描述。总之，这项研究不仅从基础研究的角度来看是有趣的，而且还为开发更有效和环境友好的加拿大甲烷资源提供了巨大的潜力

Canada is one of the world's top chemicals and plastics manufacturing countries. The production of plastics and chemicals requires important building blocks that are usually derived by from petroleum based feedstocks. Decreasing oil reserves, geopolitical issues and our abundant natural gas and shale gas resources has shifted our effort to utilize methane. Commercially, methane is converted into chemicals by indirect oxidative processes with low efficiency, high capital cost and high CO2 emissions. Direct non-oxidative methane aromatization to benzene, on the other hand, would be a more economical and environmentally friendly way. However, this route is very challenging due to the high C-H bond strength in methane and fast catalyst deactivation. This NSERC CRD project will follow a combined catalyst and reaction engineering approach to tackle thermodynamic and kinetic constraints. In detail, we will focus on novel gallium nitrides materials that exhibit high thermo- and photocatalytic activity toward methane conversion to benzene using new membrane reactor technology. This study aims at investigating the relationship between catalyst synthesis and catalyst properties, and the fundamental relationship between structure and catalytic activity, which is not well understood. Beside the experiments, comprehensive kinetic study will be conducted that allow to determine the reaction pathway and the corresponding kinetic description. In summary, this research is not only interesting from the fundamental research perspective but also offers great potential to develop strategies that exploit Canadian methane resources more efficiently and environmental friendly