Tracking the Migration and Location of Active and Inactive Copper in Zeolite Offretite for the Selective Methane-to-Methanol Conversion

The methane-to-methanol (MtM) conversion using a chemical-looping procedure via copper-exchanged zeolites has been extensively studied for over a decade. Copper-exchanged offretite (Cu-OFF) has outperformed all other zeolites in terms of yield. However, nothing is known about the materials structure-activity relationships governing this materials activity.

We therefore propose to examine Cu-OFF via operando anomalous X-ray powder diffraction (AXRPD), as has been previously achieved by us in the case of Cu-exchanged zeolite omega, to determine the location and nuclearity of the Cu active sites in zeolite OFF, as well as any changes occurring in the system during reaction conditions.

Due to ID22's ability to conduct high-resolution XRPD, as well as XRPD at low energies close to the Cu K-edge, the beamline is ideally suited for our experiments, as has already been proven previously in the case of Cu-omega.