Zero-point vibrational effects on proton shieldings: functional-group contributions from ab initio calculations.

We investigate the effects of zero-point vibrational motion on the nuclear magnetic shielding constants of a large number of organic molecules. The vibrational corrections include anharmonic contributions from the potential energy surface and harmonic contributions from the curvature of the property surface. Particular attention is paid to vibrational corrections to hydrogen shielding constants where we show that vibrational corrections may be substantial, ranging from about +0.50 to -0.70 ppm, and thus demonstrating that ignoring these effects may give errors in the chemical shifts by more than 1 ppm in certain extreme cases. These effects can therefore not be neglected when comparing calculated results with experiment, not even for the chemical shifts. However, we also demonstrate that the vibrational corrections to the hydrogen shieldings are to a large extent transferable from one molecule to another. We have tabulated functional vibrational corrections to the hydrogen shieldings, based on results for more than 35 molecules. Unfortunately, no similar transferability has been observed for the vibrational corrections to shielding constants of other nuclei such as carbon, nitrogen, or oxygen.     

Stability and activity of carbon nanofiber-supported catalysts in the aqueous phase reforming of ethylene glycol

Nickel, cobalt, copper and platinum nanoparticles supported on carbon nano-fibers were evaluated with respect to their stability, catalytic activity and selectivity in the aqueous phase reforming of ethylene glycol (230 C, autogenous pressure, batch reactor). The initial surface-specific activities for ethylene glycol reforming were in a similar range but decreased in the order of Pt (15.5 h1 ) >Co(13.0 h1 ) >Ni(5.2 h1 ) while the Cu catalyst only showed low dehydrogenation activity. The hydrogen molar selectivity decreased in the order of Pt (53%)>Co(21%)>Ni (15%) as a result of the production of methane over the latter two catalysts. Over the Co catalyst acids were formed in the liquid phase while alcohols were formed over Ni and Pt. Due to the low pH of the reaction mixture, especially in the case of Co (as a result of the formed acids), significant cobalt leaching occurs which resulted in a rapid deactivation of this catalyst. Investigations of the spent catalysts with various techniques showed that metal particle growth is responsible for the deactivation of the Pt and Ni catalysts. In addition, coking might also contribute to the deactivation of the Ni catalyst.