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

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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