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SFB 1441:  Tracking the active site in heterogeneous catalysis for emission control (TrackAct)

Subject Area Thermal Engineering/Process Engineering
Chemistry
Term since 2021
Website Homepage
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 426888090
 
The CRC 1441 aims at identifying and tracking the structure of the active site in noble metal based catalysts, exploiting the structural dynamics and predicting them. This knowledge is key to ad-vanced control as well as increased performance and lifetime of the catalysts. These materials are typically present as supported single sites, clusters or particles and play a crucial role in numerous applications in heterogeneous catalysis such as emission control, hydrogen production and fine chemical synthesis. More than 60% of the noble metals produced annually are used in these areas. While their catalytic properties are strongly dependent on the atomic scale structure, there are also cooperative and spatio-temporal effects that occur within the reactor. In addition, structural changes under process conditions and the pronounced heterogeneity of the catalytic materials often pose great challenges for their knowledge-based design. New perspectives have been evolving, e.g. in the preparation of defined metal clusters/particles, their characterization, and theoretical modeling, allowing to track and fundamentally understand the active sites in catalytic systems. This is the pri-mary focus of this interdisciplinary Collaborative Research Centre with more than 20 working groups in Karlsruhe and at the partner institutions in Munich and Hamburg. In the CRC1441, we aim at a holistic understanding of catalytic processes by linking the different length scales and catalyst complexity levels. Our scale-bridging approach connects three areas: (A) size-selected clusters and defined nanoparticles, (B) porous catalysts with noble metal particles of defined size on support ox-ides with promoter modified and oriented surfaces and (C) hierarchically structured catalysts at the reactor level. Important aspects are the use of novel preparation methods on all hierarchical levels, the tracking of the structure of the noble metal species, and multiscale modeling from molecular processes to the catalytic reactor. This integrative strategy is applied for catalytic emission control for clean air, but also fosters the development of fundamental concepts for heterogeneously cata-lyzed reactions in general. With the newly established infrastructure and the results from the first funding period, that have enabled the identification and tracking of active sites on the different complexity levels, we aim at exploiting this knowledge for advanced catalyst design through ma-nipulation of the structure of the active sites such that we are able to increase the atom efficiency of the noble metals. As our long-term goal, we envision to use predictive tools to control the struc-ture of the active sites and the performance of the catalytic reactors.
DFG Programme Collaborative Research Centres

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Applicant Institution Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
Participating Institution Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY)
Participating University Technische Universität München (TUM)
 
 

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