Paper SS-TuP9
Multiscale Investigation of Catalytic Activity of Ultra-Thin Molybdenum Nitride for Hydrogendenitrogenation Process

Tuesday, October 31, 2017, 6:30 pm, Room Central Hall

Hydrogendenitrogenation (HDN), a process of removing organonitrogen compounds from petroleum or coal-derived feedstocks, is one of the hydro treating processes in the oil refinery industry. Carefully executed studies on transition metal nitrides, mainly in molybdenum nitride, show that it can be an excellent potential substitute for hydrotreating catalysis. But till to this date, the majority of applied catalysis research for this system has been conducted over Mo2N. This proposed research is intended to explore the activity of recently developed lamellar MoN sheets for catalytic hydrogendenitrogenation (HDN) associated with larger organics, relevant to oil refinery applications (i.e. pyridine and carbazole conversion).

Delta phase MoN (δ-MoN) is preferable for this process due to the expected weakening of the Mo-N bonds within MoN relative to Mo2N due to higher nitrogen coverage in MoN and its catalytic activity is expected to be enhanced when lamellar sheets of MoN are used due to the higher surface area to volume ratio. In addition to δ-MoN, we will explore and compare the catalytic activity of different forms of molybdenum nitrides.

The lamellar sheet of the δ-MoN will be grown by using method established elsewhere and the conventional surface science techniques, like scanning-tunneling microscopy (STM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) will be used to make the molecularly, atomically and in some cases sub-atomically localized measurements of surface structures.