Bridging the pressure and materials gap in catalysis research for methanol synthesis

Methanol constitutes a building block in the manufacture of a wide range of basic chemicals.

As it can be gained from a gas mixture of green H2, CO and the greenhouse gas CO2, it also is a renewable fuel of high energy density essential for a sustainable society.

In today´s chemical industry methanol is gained from this gas mixture under high pressures (100 bar) over Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalysts.

To save energy, the catalyst efficiency needs to be improved, and the correlation between catalyst structure and activity needs to be understood under the harsh reaction conditions.The aim of the project is to use surface science techniques to study CuZn particle model catalysts under industrial conditions with the help of a novel high pressure reactor.

The techniques to be used and combined are High Energy Surface X-ray Diffraction, Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence, Surface Optical Reflectance and Polarization-Modulation Infrared Absorption Spectroscopy.

This will allow to correlate the catalyst structure to the gas phase and the catalytic activity under reaction conditions.

The project (4-years) will be carried out at the Department of Physics at Chalmers University of Technology, by the applicant (Assistant Professor), a PhD student and a postdoc.The proposed research will open doors for surface science based studies of industry-relevant chemical reactions that require high pressures and will significantly contribute to the knowledge-based tailoring of improved industrial catalysts.