Competitive Transient Electrostatic Adsorption for In Situ Regeneration of Poisoned Catalyst

Article abstract of DOI:10.1002/cctc.201802055

Catalyst deactivation by poisoning species is one important concern in catalysis processes and causes significant catalyst material and operation costs due to process shutdown and catalyst replacement. We report one new in situ catalyst regeneration method, which utilizes competitive electrostatic adsorption of charged ions which are generated with moderate DC voltage supply following the Townsend discharge mechanism to desorb poisoning species and the transient characteristic of electrostatically adsorbed ions to recover the active sites for catalysis. We demonstrate effectiveness of this new concept using HCOOH decomposition on Pt catalyst as model reaction and find the deactivated Pt regains the activity in presence of Ar⁺ generation. DFT simulations and classical electrical discharge calculations show Ar⁺ ions have significantly higher electrostatic adsorption energy than desorption energy of CO poisoning species that helps to desorb CO from Pt and generate more available active sites. This new in situ catalyst regeneration method, with convenient, noninvasive and low operation cost features, provides a promising strategy to overcome the challenges associated with current technologies that handle catalyst deactivation.

Full text of DOI:10.1002/cctc.201802055

Accepted Article
Title: Competitive Transient Electrostatic Adsorption for In Situ
Regeneration of Poisoned Catalyst
Authors: Zhenmeng Peng, Yanbo Pan, Xiaochen Shen, Libo Yao,
Abdulaziz Bentalib, Jinlong Yang, and Jie Zeng
This manuscript has been accepted after peer review and appears as an
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of the final Version of Record (VoR). This work is currently citable by
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published online in Early View as soon as possible and may be different
to this Accepted Article as a result of editing. Readers should obtain
the VoR from the journal website shown below when it is published
to ensure accuracy of information. The authors are responsible for the
content of this Accepted Article.
To be cited as: ChemCatChem 10.1002/cctc.201802055
Link to VoR: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cctc.201802055
A Journal of
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10.1002/cctc.201802055
ChemCatChem
COMMUNICATION
Competitive Transient Electrostatic Adsorption for In Situ
Regeneration of Poisoned Catalyst
Yanbo Pan, [a] Xiaochen Shen, [a] Libo Yao, [a] Abdulaziz Bentalib, [a] Jinlong Yang,[b] Jie Zeng,* [b] and
Zhenmeng Peng *[a]
Abstract: Catalyst deactivation by poisoning species is one
important concern in catalysis processes and causes significant
catalyst material and operation costs due to process shutdown and
catalyst replacement. We report one new in situ catalyst
regeneration method, which utilizes competitive electrostatic
adsorption of charged ions which are generated with moderate DC
voltage supply following the Townsend discharge mechanism to
desorb poisoning species and the transient characteristic of
electrostatically adsorbed ions to recover the active sites for
catalysis. We demonstrate effectiveness of this new concept using
HCOOH decomposition on Pt catalyst as model reaction and find the
deactivated Pt regains the activity in presence of Ar+ generation.
DFT simulations and classical electrical discharge calculations show
Ar+ ions have significantly higher electrostatic adsorption energy
than desorption energy of CO poisoning species that helps to desorb
CO from Pt and generate more available active sites. This new in
situ catalyst regeneration method, with convenient, noninvasive and
low operation cost features, provides a promising strategy to
overcome the challenges associated with current technologies that
handle catalyst deactivation.
poisoned catalysts becomes essential to recover the catalytic
activity to enable their reuses.
Till to date, off-site catalyst regeneration remains a common
procedure in practice. However, off-site regeneration process
requires periodic interruption of reaction for taking out
deactivated catalyst materials for regeneration and replacing
them with fresh ones, which often adds complexity over reaction
control and additional operation cost.[5] To overcome this issue,
in situ catalyst regeneration is demanded.
Although the past decades witnessed considerable research
efforts in developing in situ catalyst regeneration techniques, few
successes have been achieved. For instance, there were
studies of in situ regeneration of coking catalyst by co-feeding
hydrogen, air, hot steam and other reagents to reaction
systems.[6] Despite of effectiveness in removing the coke, other
poisoning species like CO and NOx were generated. Undesired
reactions between the co-fed chemicals and reactants also
occurred that led to altered product distribution.[2] Nonthermal
plasma was proposed for in situ regeneration of Au/TiO2 catalyst
in CO oxidation,[7] as it can generate oxygen radicals, electrons
and excited molecules to help with desorption of poisoning
species.[8] However, plasma generation requires high energy
input that raises an efficiency issue, and the generated radicals
are highly reactive that would cause undesired reactions. To
realize in situ catalyst regeneration without side effects, new
mechanisms that allow efficient removal of poisoning species
from surface and in the meantime do not affect the reactions are
desired.
Herein we report one new Competitive Transient Electrostatic
Adsorption (CTEA) mechanism for energy-efficient and
noninvasive in situ regeneration of poisoned catalyst. We utilize
the Townsend discharge phenomena for Ar+ generation at a
moderate DC voltage, and utilize CTEA of Ar+ for competition
against chemisorbed poisoning species to regenerate the active
sites. Effectiveness of this interesting mechanism is
demonstrated with Pt nanoparticle catalysis in HCOOH
decomposition, which exhibits dramatically recovered activity
with unaltered reaction pathway.
Poisoning is identified as one major cause of catalyst
deactivation,[1] resulting in billions of dollars loss every year for
catalyst replacement and process shutdown.[2] Due to strong
chemisorption of poisoning species (impurities in reactant feeds
or generated during reaction), active sites would be occupied
and deactivated. For instance, H2 purification is required prior to
use for fuel cell and ammonia synthesis reactions since H2
produced from hydrocarbon reforming often contains CO as
byproduct that can readily poison transition metal catalysts in the
two applications.[3] Formic acid is considered as hydrogen carrier
for its allowance of catalytic decomposition into H2 under
ambient condition. Pt is discovered as one active catalyst for this
reaction, which however, gets deactivated rapidly due to the
generation and accumulation of CO species that occupy the
active sites based on previous studies.[4] Thus regeneration of
Mechanistic studies have identified two reaction routes in
HCOOH decomposition, namely dehydrogenation and
dehydration pathways:[9]
[a]
[b]
Y. Pan, X. Shen, L. Yao, A. Bentalib, Z. Peng
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio 44325, United States
E-mail: zpeng@uakron.edu
퐻퐶푂푂퐻 ↔ 퐶푂2 + 퐻2 ∆퐺 = −48.4 푘퐽 푚표푙−1
(1)
J. Yang, J, Zeng
퐻퐶푂푂퐻 ↔ 퐶푂 + 퐻2푂 ∆퐺 = −28.5 푘퐽 푚표푙−1 (2)
Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale,
Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of
Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Department of Chemical
Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei,
Anhui 230026, China
Pt was found as one most active catalyst, but can readily
deactivate with reaction time.[10] This is because Pt can catalyze
both reactions, which would generate CO that exhibits strong
chemisorption (Figure 1a). Consequently, the generated CO
would accumulate on Pt surface and block the active sites,
resulting in a rapid decay in the catalytic activity.[11]
E-mail: zengj@ustc.edu.cn
Supporting information for this article is given via a link at the end of
the document.
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10.1002/cctc.201802055
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supply by flowing Ar gas-carried HCOOH into the reactor and
analyzing the product effluents with gas chromatography (GC).
Original GC counts were directly used to evaluate the products
because of the usage of tiny catalyst amount that led to minimal
conversion. Both H2 and CO2 were detected at the beginning of
reaction (Figure 2a), suggesting an initial good activity of Pt. It
exhibited a rapid decay in the activity, with barely any gas
products being detectable after 120 min on stream. The
observed Pt deactivation was consistent with previous studies
and was attributed to the generation of poisoning CO. [11] No CO
product detected throughout the experiment, which could be
caused by the fact that any generated CO would not desorb
owning to the strong chemisorption.
In situ regeneration of the poisoned Pt catalyst was studied by
applying -800 V DC voltage to the reactor (a negative value
stands for the Pt electrode being grounded). This voltage
generated an electric field between the two plate electrodes,
with 2.67 kV/cm field strength and the field direction towards the
Pt electrode. Such a field is below the breakdown voltage limit
for Ar and falls in the Townsend discharge regime for Ar+
generation.[14] An immediate activity recovery of the deactivated
Pt was observed, evidenced by instant increases in the H2 and
CO2 gas products (Figure 2b). Interestingly, a low content of CO
was also detected, which would result from desorption of this
poisoning species from the deactivated Pt surface. This finding
confirmed effectiveness of DC voltage supply on catalyst
regeneration.
Figure 1. Schematic illustration of (a) CO poisoning species generation and
accumulation on Pt surface in HCOOH decomposition and (b) the concept of
in-situ regeneration of poisoned catalyst by removing CO poisoning species
utilizing competitive and transient electrostatic adsorption of Ar+ species.
The effectiveness of this new method was further validated by
switching the voltage off and on and observing corresponding
loss and recovery of the catalytic activity for multiple cycles. In
the meantime, the recovered activity of Pt exhibited an
exponential dependency on the DC voltage, with a higher
voltage leading to a higher reaction rate (Figure 2c). Control
experiments with DC voltage supply but without Pt catalyst
showed little reaction, which excluded occurrence of HCOOH
decomposition in the gas bulk phase, suggesting the regained
HCOOH decomposition activity was attributed to the catalyst
regeneration. Considering an exponential voltage-current
correlation induced by the Townsend avalanche discharge
mechanism, we also examined the correlation between the
recovered catalyst activity and the Townsend discharge current
(Figure 2d). Both the H2 and CO2 generation rates showed linear
proportion with the measured DC current, implying a critical role
of the current in regenerating poisoned catalyst. Considering the
generated Ar+ accounts for the current and the associated
electric field direction, a plausible explanation would be that Ar+
ions migrate and electrostatically adsorb to Pt catalyst that
regenerate the surface by competing against chemisorbed CO
molecules and forcing them to desorb. This mechanism would
also be able to explain the observation that the H2 and CO2
production rates gradually decreased from the initially recovered
values and became eventually stabilized when the DC voltage
was switched on and maintained at designated value (Figure
2b), which could be attributed to changes in Ar+ generation
accompanied with a capacitive charging process induced by a
sudden jump in voltage. A positive DC voltage was also capable
of regenerating the poisoned Pt, but to a lower extent comparing
with the negative voltage of same value. Figure 3a shows the
generation rates of H2, CO2 and CO when an 800 V voltage was
Figure 1b illustrates the concept of CTEA for in situ
regeneration of CO-poisoned Pt catalyst. An applied moderate
DC voltage would generate an electric field in the reaction
atmosphere, which accelerates free electrons to collide with Ar
molecules for charge avalanche multiplication, following the
Townsend discharge mechanism.[12] Driven by the electric field,
the generated Ar+ would migrate and electrostatically adsorb to
Pt catalyst being grounded. The electrostatic adsorption
competes with chemisorbed CO that forces CO desorption.
Meanwhile, charge transfer between electrostatically adsorbed
Ar+ and grounded Pt leads to charge neutralization, followed by
rapid Ar desorption. Thus the Ar+ electrostatic adsorption is a
transient process that regenerates active sites to allow
continuous HCOOH decomposition catalysis without process
interruption.
This CTEA mechanism was tested by examining HCOOH
decomposition at room temperature in one flow reactor of design
(Figure S1), which consisted of two parallel silicon wafers
positioned in distance of 3 mm and connected with a DC voltage
supply. One thin layer of commercial Pt/C catalyst was
deposited on the grounded wafer (see Supporting Information
for more experimental details). Transmission electron
microscopy (TEM) of the catalyst showed a fine dispersion of Pt
nanoparticles on carbon support, with an average particle size of
around 3 nm (Figure S2a). Clear lattice fringes were observed
with high-resolution TEM (HRTEM), indicating
a
good
crystallinity of Pt. The lattice fringe spacing was measured as
0.224 nm, which was indexed to the (111) plane of face-
centered-cubic (fcc) Pt.[13]
The catalytic properties of the Pt catalyst in HCOOH
decomposition was firstly investigated in absence of DC voltage
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switched on and off, exhibiting a same trend as using -800 V but
less effective activity recovering. This was likely caused by the
fact that electrons rather than Ar+ would electrostatically adsorb
to the catalyst surface to facilitate CO desorption at a positive
voltage.
Figure 2. (a) HCOOH decomposition on the Pt catalyst as function of reaction time, (b) the catalyst activity regeneration and deactivation profile corresponding to
an -800 V DC voltage being switched on (with red topping on the black column) and off (black column), (c) the influence of the DC voltage on the catalyst activity
regeneration, and (d) the established correlations among the reaction rates, the applied DC voltage and the generated DC current.
Figure 3. (a) The catalyst activity regeneration and deactivation profile corresponding to an 800 V DC voltage being switched on and off, (b) the established
correlations among the reaction rates, the applied DC voltage and the generated DC current in N2 atmosphere, and (c) control experiments for examination of the
Joule effect.
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COMMUNICATION
Figure 4. DFT-simulated reaction pathways and energy diagram for HCOOH decomposition on Pt (111).
The poisoned catalyst could also be in situ regenerated in N2
atmosphere (Figure 3b), revealing that CTEA mechanism is
generic and applicable to catalyst regeneration in various
reaction environment. The product generation on the applied DC
voltage exhibited a same trend as Ar, but with significantly
studies.[19] HCOOH decomposition on Pt was found to follow the
[20]
formate route,
in which free HCOOH molecule approaches
and adsorbs to Pt with its carbonyl oxygen and hydroxyl group
(HCOOH*). HCOOH* dissociates into one H* and one bidentate
bridging intermediate (HCOOboob*), which undergoes isomeric
higher GC counts that suggested more effective activity recovery. transformation to another bidentate bridging intermediate that
This could be attributed to generation of more 푁2+ species and
more effective interaction of 푁2+ species with Pt surface than Ar+.
N2 was reported to have lower ionization energy than Ar that
makes it easier to generate 푁2+ species with a same DC
voltage,[15] as evidenced by the measurement of a larger current,
and have an elastic scattering cross-section that is nearly two
orders of magnitude larger than Ar,[16] which would make 푁2+
CTEA competes more effectively against CO chemisorption. To
exclude the possible Joule heat effect on catalyst
regeneration,[17] control experiments were conducted by applying
a current directly through the Pt catalyst electrode and keeping
all other condition parameters unchanged. No measurable
influences on the catalyst regeneration were observed with the
current up to 25 mA (Figure 3c), suggesting negligible Joule
heat effect in this study. These results further validated that the
catalyst regeneration process induced by the DC voltage supply
should be mainly attributed to the generation of an ionized
species (Ar+, e-) that facilitate desorption of CO poisoning
species owing to CTEA. It needs mentioned that this mechanism
could be easily introduced to the industry by running the
has one oxygen interacting with two surface Pt sites (HCOObob*).
HCOObob would decompose via either dehydration or
dehydrogenation mechanisms. In the dehydrogenation pathway,
HCOObob* decomposes into CO2* and a second H*, followed by
release of CO2 via CO2* desorption and generation of H2 via
*
recombination of two H*. In the dehydration pathway, HCOObob
*
reacts with H* to generate CO* and H2O*, which then desorb to
form final CO and H2O products. The dehydrogenation route
exhibits a significantly lower activation energy barrier compared
with the dehydration route (1.14 eV versus 3.35 eV), which
agrees well with the experimentally observed good selectivity of
Pt catalyst towards H2 production. Meanwhile, CO* desorption
route requires a big energy barrier of 2.10 eV, which is
significantly higher than that for other products. It needs noted
that this 2.10 eV barrier includes desorption of both CO* and
H2O*. Considering previous studies have reported an energy
[21]
barrier of around 0.6 eV for the desorption of H2O*,
the
energy barrier for CO* desorption would be around 1.5 eV in this
study. This value is consistent with literature reported data that
vary between 1.2 eV and 1.74 eV with different functionals and
model structures of use.[22] It implies a slow desorption kinetics
and consequently gradual accumulation of CO* species on Pt
surface, which would block the active sites from HCOOH
decomposition catalysis. This DFT data is in good consistence
with our experimental results and the identified poisoning role of
CO*. It needs mentioned that the calculated 3.35 eV energy
barrier for the dehydration route in this work is close to that
[18]
Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) reactor of industrial scale
in Townsend Discharge region with appropriate DC voltage.
To achieve more insights of the in situ regeneration process,
we conducted DFT simulations of HCOOH decomposition
pathways on the Pt (111) and classical electrical discharge
calculation for electrostatic adsorption of Ar+ ions (see
Supporting Information for more details). Figure 4 shows the
DFT-calculated energy diagrams, with the data being
summarized in Table S1 and in good agreement with previous
reported by Hu et al (2.92 eV) but larger than that in the work of
23]
Scaranto et al (1.82 eV),[19,
which is due to the different
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10.1002/cctc.201802055
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reaction pathways being followed (See Supporting Information
for details).
method to in situ regenerate poisoned catalyst materials. With
the catalyst itself being significantly recovered at cost of a
minimal power input (at 0.1 W magnitude), this new method
shows a good potential to help reduce the operation cost
associated with poisoned catalyst replacement in many reaction
processes.
From the perspective of Townsend discharge theory, Ar would
be ionized by acceleration of free electrons upon applying an
electric field. The generated Ar+ would be accelerated by the
field and collide to deionize more Ar molecules, leading to
charge avalanche multiplication. The mean kinetic energy (휀) of
Ar+ ions striking the negative electrode was estimated to be 11.7
eV with 800 V DC voltage under the experimental condition in
this study using the Townsend discharge theory[24] and
symmetric charge-transfer cross section data of Ar from previous
studies.[25] This 휀 value would lead to strong CTEA of Ar+ to Pt
that competes with other chemically adsorbed species. The
impact of CTEA of Ar+ on the Pt catalyst was evaluated by
calculating the concentration of vacant active sites (퐶푣) with the
Pseudo Steady-State Hypothesis (PSSH) method (See
Supporting Information for details).[26] The calculations show
strong CO chemisorption caused a low 퐶푣. In comparison, the
presence of Ar+ ions and their CTEA to the negative electrode
(i.e., the Pt catalyst surface) would compete with CO
chemisorption. Because the 휀 was significantly bigger than the
CO desorption energy (11.7 eV vs. 1.5 eV), the concentration of
vacant active sites (퐶푣′) in presence of Ar+ was found to be
dramatically higher than 퐶푣. In other words, the catalyst would be
regenerated by creating more vacant active sites with Townsend
discharged Ar+ by applying an appropriate electric field. It needs
noted strong electrostatic adsorption of Ar+ ions resultant of a
high ε would possibly cause catalyst surface rearrangement,
which could induce changes in the activity property as well.
Nevertheless, the fact that the catalyst became deactivated
rapidly after turning off DC voltage indicated that the observed
regaining of catalyst activity with Ar+ ions was mainly caused by
active site regeneration. Our rough estimation of the power
energy input needed per HCOOH molecule decomposition gave
a small value of 0.0023 eV/per HCOOH, which was minimal
compared to energy barriers required for the reaction and
indicated cost effectiveness of this new competitive electrostatic
adsorption mechanism (See Supporting Information for details).
In summary, we demonstrated the concept of utilizing CTEA
to compete with poisoning species chemisorption for in situ
regeneration of poisoned catalyst, especially for the catalyst
poisoned by reversibly chemisorbed species. We verified
effectiveness of this new concept by studying HCOOH
decomposition as one model reaction and examining the effects
of CTEA of Ar+ on the reaction properties. By applying a
moderate DC voltage to create an electric field that generates
Ar+ ions following the Townsend discharge mechanism, the
deactivated Pt catalyst exhibited an immediate recovery of the
activity. The extent of the catalyst activity recovery was
discovered to increase proportionally to the measured Ar+
current, which was attributed to a larger number of Ar+ ions that
facilitate the desorption of chemisorbed CO poisoning species to
regenerate the active sites via the CTEA mechanism. DFT
simulations together with Townsend discharge theory suggested
that the electrostatic adsorption energy of Ar+ ions was
dramatically bigger than the desorption energy of poisoning CO
(11.7 eV @ 800 V vs. 1.5 eV), which would force CO desorption
to recover availability of the Pt active sites. The findings suggest
CTEA mechanism offers a new, convenient and effective
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the financial support of this work by National
Science Foundation (1665265).
Keywords: catalyst regeneration • electrostatic adsorption •
Townsend discharge • catalyst poisoning • formic acid
decomposition
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Entry for the Table of Contents
COMMUNICATION
We report one new in situ catalyst
regeneration method, which utilizes
competitive electrostatic adsorption of
charged ions to desorb poisoning
species and transient characteristic of
these electrostatically adsorbed ions
to recover the active sites for catalysis.
The charged ions can be generated
with moderate DC voltage supply
following the Townsend discharge
mechanism. Effectiveness of this new
concept is demonstrated using
HCOOH decomposition on Pt catalyst
as model reaction.
Yanbo Pan, Xiaochen Shen, Libo Yao,
Abdulaziz Bentalib, Jinlong Yang, Jie
Zeng,* and Zhenmeng Peng *
Page No. – Page No.
Competitive Transient Electrostatic
Adsorption for In Situ Regeneration of
Poisoned Catalyst
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