posted on 2023-02-17, 12:35authored bySamuel Pattisson, Simon R Dawson, Grazia Malta, Nicholas F Dummer, Louise R Smith, Anna Lazaridou, David J Morgan, Simon J Freakley, Simon KondratSimon Kondrat, Joost J Smit, Peter Johnston, Graham J Hutchings
The commercialization of gold for acetylene hydrochlorination represents a major scientific landmark. The development of second-generation gold catalysts continues with a focus on derivatives and drop-in replacements with higher activity and stability. Here, we show the influence that the support surface oxygen has on the activity of carbon supported gold catalysts. Variation in the surface oxygen content of carbon is achieved through careful modification of the Hummers chemical oxidation method prior to the deposition of gold. All oxidized carbon-based catalysts resulted in a marked increase in activity at 200 °C when compared to the standard nontreated carbon, with an optimum oxygen content of ca. 18 at % being observed. Increasing oxygen and relative concentration of C-O functionality yields catalysts with light-off temperatures 30-50 °C below the standard catalyst. This understanding opens a promising avenue to produce high activity acetylene hydrochlorination catalysts that can operate at lower temperatures.
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by American Chemical Society under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/