Comparison of Bulk and Supported V-P-O Catalysts New Insights in The Active Phase in C4 Oxidation To Ma
Comparison of Bulk and Supported V-P-O Catalysts New Insights in The Active Phase in C4 Oxidation To Ma
Comparison of Bulk and Supported V-P-O Catalysts New Insights in The Active Phase in C4 Oxidation To Ma
ABSTRACT
V-P-O catalysts supported on the surface of silica and titania particles were
studied and results are compared with those obtained from bulk V-P-O. The
catalytic performance was tested in the n-butane oxidation reaction to maleic
anhydride and the structure of the (equilibrated) catalysts after the catalytic
reaction was characterised with X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAFS) and (lowtemperature) Electron Spin Resonance spectroscopy (ESR).
Our results show considerable differences in catalytic performance between
VPO/TiO2, on the one, and VPO/SiO2 and VPO/bulk, on the other hand. The yield
to maleic anhydride is comparable for VPO/bulk and VPO/SiO2.
The differences in catalytic behaviour are attributed to differences in the local
structure around vanadium (XAFS). Furthermore, different spin exchange
interactions between vanadium atoms in the three samples have been observed
(ESR). The combination of the characterisation methods employed suggests that
the structure of the supported V-P-O phase is possibly amorphous and differs
considerably from that of bulk crystalline vanadylpyrophosphate.
We therefore propose that the oxidation of n-butane to maleic anhydride takes
place over a surface V-P-O phase that does not equal vanadylpyrophosphate. This
finding has high relevance for our understanding of the catalytic activity of bulk
crystalline V-P-O catalysts as well.
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Chapter 5
INTRODUCTION
Bulk catalysts based on vanadium-phosphorus-oxide (V-P-O) are industrially used
for the production of maleic anhydride (MA) from n-butane. The V-P-O system has
been under investigation for the last three decades, and although it is widely
accepted that vanadylpyrophosphate, (VO)2P2O7, is the main component in the
active catalyst, still little is known about the exact nature of the catalytic active
site [1,2,3,4].
At Utrecht University much effort has been devoted to the development of
supported V-P-O catalysts, as the supported V-P-O catalysts have superior
characteristics over bulk V-P-O, such as a cheap and reproducible preparation
procedure, a larger amount of active sites per unit surface area, a short activation
period, and a high mechanical strength [5,6,7]. Therefore, application of
supported V-P-O catalysts in a fluidised-bed process is very promising.
The newly developed supported catalysts show interesting catalytic properties.
For instance, titania-supported V-P-O is already active at moderate temperatures
(523 K vs. 673 K for the commercial bulk catalyst), although the selectivity is
rather low [5,7]. Silica-supported V-P-O catalysts, on the other hand, show
reasonable yields to maleic anhydride [6] and these systems have been further
optimised in our laboratory.
In the literature, only a few other examples of deposition of V-P-O on silica
[8,9,10], titania [11], alumina [11,12,13,14] and AlPO4 [15] have been described.
Generally, the lack of long-range order of the supported V-P-O moieties
compromises a proper characterisation of the supported V-P-O phase with
common techniques, such as X-ray diffraction and FTIR spectroscopy.
Nevertheless, most supported V-P-O catalysts are reported to consist of a phase
that strongly resembles V5+-phosphate, mostly -VOPO4 or -VOPO4 [16,17].
Generally, the catalytic activity of V-P-O catalysts has been related to the local
structure of surface vanadyl groups in vanadylpyrophosphate. However, with
most techniques, no explicit information about the catalytically active surface is
obtained. The structure of crystalline vanadylpyrophosphate consists of pairs of
edge-sharing pseudo octahedrally co-ordinated vanadium ions at a distance of
3.23 , isolated from other pairs by pyrophosphate groups [18]. This structural
unit is often used to model the active sites in V-P-O catalysts [2,19,20]. In
addition, various other models have been proposed, i.e. interfaces between
different VOPO4 phases and (VO)2P2O7 [16,17], V5+ sites on the surface of
(VO)2P2O7 [2], V5+ species in interaction with VO(PO3)2 [21], and amorphous V4+
and/or V5+ phases supported on crystalline (VO)2P2O7 [22,23].
In this chapter we describe our study on the structure-activity relationship of
supported V-P-O catalysts. To this end, we have applied X-ray absorption
spectroscopy (XANES/EXAFS) at the vanadium K-edge and ESR spectroscopy.
These techniques do not require crystallinity of the sample and provide information
on the local micro-structure around the vanadium site.
58
59
Chapter 5
The catalyst samples were pressed into self-supporting wafers and mounted in an
EXAFS cell [29]. The thickness of the wafer was chosen in such a way as to give
an absorption (x) of 2.5 at the absorption edge for optimal signal-to-noise ratio.
To prevent self-absorption by the catalysts the amount of sample was chosen
such that a step in absorption of 1.0 in the edge region (x=1) was obtained. If
necessary, samples were diluted with boron nitride (BN). Standard procedures
were used to extract the EXAFS data from the measured absorption spectrum.
The background was subtracted using Victoreen routines [30].
The ESR experiments were performed on an X-band Bruker ESP300 spectrometer
equipped with an EN801 resonator (operating in TM110 cylindrical mode with
unloaded Q=1000). The microwave power was 1 mW, far below saturation levels
for the supported V-P-O samples. The magnetic field was modulated with a
frequency of 12.5 kHz and an amplitude of 1 Gauss. The sample temperature was
adjusted in the range of 3.7-300 K with an Oxford ESR900 helium flow cryostat
under control of an Oxford ITC503 temperature controller (temperature stability of
0.5 K).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Catalyst performance
In Figure 1 the conversions as a function of the temperature over VPO/bulk,
VPO/TiO2 and VPO/SiO2 are represented. It is obvious that VPO/TiO2 is the most
active catalyst, already showing conversion at 473 K. In general, our titaniasupported catalysts are even more active at lower loadings [5]. Despite the lower
amount of V-P-O present in the silica-supported catalyst, this sample is more
active than the bulk catalyst. The higher specific surface areas of the active
component in the supported catalysts can explain this difference. The specific
surface area (BET method) of the samples was determined to be 9 m2/g for
VPO/bulk, 54 m2/g for VPO/SiO2 and 44 m2/g for VPO/TiO2, respectively.
Both VPO/bulk and VPO/SiO2 show about the same selectivity to maleic anhydride
(Figure 2). The optimum yield for VPO/bulk and VPO/SiO2 is 25-30% at a
conversion of 50%. This might indicate that the nature of the active sites of the
silica-supported and of the bulk catalyst is the same. However, with VPO/SiO2 the
selectivity decreases much more rapidly when the conversion is raised. The
selectivity of VPO/TiO2 at low conversions is substantially below that of the other
catalysts and only a yield of 6% is obtained at a conversion of 30%.
The differences in activity and selectivity between VPO/TiO2, on the one, and
VPO/SiO2 and VPO/bulk, on the other hand, have been ascribed to the stronger
interaction between V-P-O and titania [5,7]. Therefore, we will focus on the
structural characterisation of the various samples in the remaining part of this
chapter.
60
100
80
60
40
20
0
400
500
600
700
800
T (K)
Figure 1
100
MA selectivity (%)
80
60
40
20
0
20
40
60
80
61
Chapter 5
Absorption (a.u.)
VPO/bulk
VPO/TiO2
VPO/SiO2
5530
5550
absorption edge.
Figure 3
Vanadium K-edge XANES spectra of VPO/Bulk,
VPO/TiO2 employed in the oxidation of n-butane.
VPO/SiO2
5450
5470
5490
5510
Energy (eV)
and
Based on the work of Wong et al., these features can be attributed to different coordination geometries found in various vanadyl compounds, i.e. tetrahedral (VO4),
square pyramidal (VO5) or distorted octahedral (VO6) [31,32,33]. The XANES
spectrum of VPO/bulk agrees well with that reported for VO5 or distorted VO6
compounds, as expected from the single crystal XRD data [18,34]. However, the
XANES spectra of VPO/TiO2 and VPO/SiO2 are clearly different, indicating that
VO4 geometry is present in the titania-supported catalyst and distorted VO6
geometry in the silica-supported catalyst respectively.
However, the XANES features of the X-ray absorption data must first be
confirmed by the EXAFS spectra before conclusions can be drawn.
Figure 4 shows the k2 Fourier transforms of VPO/bulk and VPO/SiO2. It is obvious
that the imaginary parts of the two Fourier transforms differ significantly around
1.5 . This is the range where the contributions of the first-shell oxygen atoms are
located. Furthermore, an important additional contribution at about 2 is present
in the data of VPO/SiO2. For the higher co-ordination shells the spectra of bulk and
supported V-P-O differ considerably. A detailed description of the EXAFS data
62
FT (a.u.)
VPO/bulk
VPO/SiO2
-1
0
R ()
VPO/bulk have been reported elsewhere [35,37].
Figure 4
Fourier transforms (k2, k= 3.5-10 -1) of the EXAFS data of
VPO/bulk (solid line) and VPO/SiO2 (dotted line).
Although an appreciable amount (about 30%) of our VPO/bulk catalyst consists of
an amorphous V-P-O phase [34,36], the EXAFS spectrum is dominated by the
structure of the ideally crystalline vanadylpyrophosphate phase [35]. This places
EXAFS, together with Raman spectroscopy and XRD, in the group of techniques
less appropriate or unsuitable to study possible amorphous (surface) contributions
in bulk V-P-O catalysts.
Figure 5 represents the k2 Fourier transforms of the EXAFS data of both supported
catalysts. These spectra are markedly different from each other both in the first
co-ordination shell and in the higher shells. It is important to note that the
spectrum of VPO/TiO2 also deviates from that of VPO/bulk. This means that the
structures of both supported V-P-O catalysts differ from that of bulk crystalline
(VO)2P2O7.
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Chapter 5
FT (a.u.)
VPO/TiO2
VPO/SiO2
-1
0
R ()
Figure 5
As stated above, EXAFS is a technique that can probe the local structure around
the central vanadium atom, up to a distance of 4 . In principle, the EXAFS
spectrum represents the superposition of both bulk and surface contributions.
However, the EXAFS spectrum of VPO/SiO2 is not suffering from interfering
dominant bulk contributions and, hence, represents clearly the local structure of
the amorphous V-P-O phase at the surface.
Preliminary analyses of the EXAFS data indicate that VPO/TiO2 consists of small
particles, in which the isolated V atoms are tetrahedrally co-ordinated by oxygen
atoms, including oxygen atoms bridging V and Ti [35]. The VPO/SiO2 catalyst on
the other hand, consists of vanadyl groups in an octahedral environment [35,37].
This result raises the question concerning the distance between adjacent V atoms.
It is important to note that with both supported V-P-O catalysts no V-V
contributions are found in the EXAFS data up to a distance of 3.5 . To study the
V-V interaction in the supported catalysts we therefore have applied ESR
spectroscopy.
ESR spectroscopy
ESR spectroscopy is a powerful technique to probe paramagnetic centres. The
major part of V-P-O catalysts consists of V4+-phosphate (d1) with electronic spin
S=1/2. When the supported catalysts contain only isolated vanadyl groups, the
ESR spectrum will appear as a characteristic octet of the hyperfine coupling with
the 51V nucleus (I=7/2). In practice, the V hyperfine coupling is often unresolved
in solid state V-P-O samples [38].
64
290 K
200 K
100 K
3.90 K
2850
3100
3350
3600
3850
B sweep (Gauss)
antiferromagnetic defects in a ratio of 10:7:2 [34,36].
Figure 6
65
Chapter 5
In the paramagnetic regime (T>TNeel), the ESR intensity, I, can be described by the
Curie-Weiss equation for antiferromagnets:
I(T)
(1)
20
40
60
80
T (K)
Figure 7
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Chapter 5
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Chapter 5
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