Examining the Local Order and Stability of Copper-Exchanged Zeolite Omega For the Methane-to-Methanol Conversion via In-Situ PDF & XRD

The methane-to-methanol conversion is seen as one of the "holy grail" reactions of catalysis. One extensively examined pathway is the chemical looping
approach using copper-exchanged zeolites. Copper-exchanged zeolite omega has outperformed all other examined copper-zeolites in multiple metrics such as productivity. Further increases may be envisaged by increasing the copper-loading or modifiyng the zeolite framework to exhibit a hierarchical pore structure. However, besides potentially destabilizing the framework, a change in the nature of the reaction as well as the active site is possible.

This proposal aims to investigate the stability of the long-range structure of the system and pinpoint the changes in the local order of copper-active sites under different conditions. This will be done by using time-resolved high energy powder XRD and PDF, coupled with mass spectrometry.