Optimal Water Coverage on Alumina: A Key to Generate Lewis Acid-Base Pairs that are Reactive Towards the C-H Bond Activation of Methane

摘要

The activation of methane is still a great challenge today, because it constitutes one of the largest hydrocarbon resources on earth. Many oxides catalyze processes involving the activation of OH bonds. Of these, γ-alumina (γ-Al2O3) is one of the most active: when treated beforehand at temperatures above 400 °C, it catalyses H/D exchange reactions of D2/CH4 and CH4/CD4 mixtures at room temperature with unexpectedly low activation energies (17-30 kJmol~(-1)). These reactions involve a very small number of active sites (defects) generated by the high-temperature pretreatment.