Invited Paper HC+SS-WeM12
New Catalysis for Light Alkanes – From Methane Functionalization to Light Akenes

Wednesday, October 24, 2018, 11:40 am, Room 201A

The abundant availability of light alkanes opened new opportunities to synthesize light alkenes and oxygenates, challenged only by the high dispersion of the carbon sources, requiring dedicated processes. Three different principal catalysis pathways will be discussed, the conversion of methane to methanol, the oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane and the dehydrogenation of propane to propene, eventually followed by aromatization. For the three approaches it will be shown, how the atomistic understanding of the catalyst properties including an atomistic description of the active site by combining electron microscopy and X-ray absorption spectroscopy and the molecular pathways by identifying elementary steps via NMR spectroscopy and isotope labeling allows to drastically develop catalysts and catalytic pathways. Combining rigorous kinetics with spectroscopy allowed for all three cases to describe rates linked to specific active sites and maximize their concentration. The potential and limitations of this fundamental approaches to discover new catalysts and improve existing will be discussed.