Effect of potassium addition on bimetallic PtSn/θ-Al<Subscript>2</Subscript>O<Subscript>3</Subscript> catalyst for dehydrogenation of propane to propylene

PtSn/θ-Al₂O₃ catalysts with different amounts of K (0.14, 0.22, 0.49, 0.72, and 0.96 wt%) are prepared to investigate the K effects on the PtSn catalyst in propane dehydrogenation (PDH). KPtSn catalyst with 0.xx wt% K, 0.5 wt% Pt and 0.75 wt% Sn is designated as xx-KPtSn. PDH was performed at 873 K and a gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) of 53,000 mL/g_cat h. The temperature-programmed desorption (NH₃-TPD), temperature-programmed reduction (TPR) and CO chemisorption of the KPtSn catalysts with K added revealed the potassium addition blocked the acid sites, promoted the reduction of Sn oxide and decreased the Pt dispersion. The formations of cracking products and higher hydrocarbons on acid sites were suppressed by the K effect of blocking the acid sites. In contrast, K addition at more than 0.72 wt% rather increased cracking products and the amount of coke, resulting in the severe deactivation of catalysts. The high cracking products on the KPtSn catalysts with the high amount of K should not be related to the acid sites, because the acid sites were monotonously decreased with an increase in the amount of K. Instead, the potassium affected the characteristics of PtSn. The interaction between Pt and Sn could be weakened by enriching the reduced Sn, because the K component promoted the reduction of Sn oxide in the TPR experiments. Therefore, the 14-KPtSn catalyst with the low amount of K exhibits the highest stability and selectivity among the prepared KPtSn catalysts due to the compromise of the advantageous (blocking the acid sites) and bad (weakening the interaction between Pt and Sn) effects of the K addition in PDH.     

Influence of exciton-exciton interaction with spin paired charge carriers and exciton-lattice interaction on the surface properties of crystalline solids

Applying tight-binding approximation and spin pairing of like charge carriers in a pair of excitons created in a lattice, the possibility of forming a bound exciton-exciton state is studied. It is found that, provided there exists strong exciton-lattice interaction, such a bound state may be formed and its energy may lie within the valence band deforming the material into a crystalline solid with no energy gap. Lowering of the energy is calculated in naphthalene and anthracene crystals where some experimental results are known. The excess energy released after the formation of such bound state can be adequate, depending on the material, to desorb neutral atoms or eject of electrons from surfaces.     

On the existence of efficient points in locally convex spaces

We study the existence of efficient points in a locally convex space ordered by a convex cone. New conditions are imposed on the ordering cone such that for a set which is closed and bounded in the usual sense or with respect to the cone, the set of efficient points is nonempty and the domination property holds.     

Editorial

In order to use the same wave-functions for comparisons between different Starkbroadening (semi-classical) theories, Thomas-Fermi and Coulomb oscillator-strengths are computed for the All 3p-nd, and 4s-n'p transition arrays.     

Hermite–Birkhoff–Obrechkoff four-stage four-step ODE solver of order 14 with quantized step size

A four-stage Hermite–Birkhoff–Obrechkoff method of order 14 with four quantized variable steps, denoted by HBOQ(14)4, is constructed for solving non-stiff systems of first-order differential equations of the form y^′=f(t,y)$y^{\prime }=f(t,y)$ with initial conditions y(_t0)=_y0$y\left(t_0\right)=y_0$. Its formula uses y^′$y^{\prime }$, y^″$y^{″}$ and y^?$y^{?}$ as in Obrechkoff methods. Forcing a Taylor expansion of the numerical solution to agree with an expansion of the true solution leads to multistep- and Runge–Kutta-type order conditions which are reorganized into linear Vandermonde-type systems. To reduce overhead, simple formulae are derived only once to obtain the values of Hermite–Birkhoff interpolation polynomials in terms of Lagrange basis functions for 16 quantized step size ratios. The step size is controlled by a local error estimator. When programmed in C ++, HBOQ(14)4 is superior to the Dormand–Prince Runge–Kutta pair DP(8,7)13M of order 8 in solving several problems often used to test higher order ODE solvers at stringent tolerances. When programmed in Matlab, it is superior to ode113 in solving costly problems, on the basis of the number of steps, CPU time, and maximum global error. The code is available on the URL www.site.uottawa.ca/~remi.     

Scale invariant characteristic energy of the one-dimensional electron gas with backward scattering

The characteristic energy scale for a one-dimensional electron gas is obtained through the scaling equations for the invariant couplings in next leading order divergence renormalization. This characteristic energy is proportional to the gap of the spin density excitations spectrum.     

Study on the isomeric ratios of (γ,p) photonuclear reactions with isotopes 40 92 Zr and 74 183 W in the giant dipole resonance region

We have carried out the study on the isomeric ratios in (γ,p) photonuclear reactions with isotopes ₄₀ ⁹² Zr and ₇₄ ¹⁸³ W in the giant dipole resonance (GDR) region. The targets were irradiated with bremsstrahlungs produced by electron accelerator Microtron MT-25 of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia. Spectra of the irradiated samples were measured with a spectroscopic system consisting of 8192-channel analyzer CANBERRA and high-energy resolution semiconductor detector CANBERRA. The results were discussed and compared with those of other authors. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Supersymmetric Ising field theory

We construct the simplest solvable non-trivial (S ≠ 1) supersymmetric model: the supersymmetric Ising field theory. The supersymmetric generalization of the duality order/disorder algebra is discussed. Finally we attempt to “double” the model and comment on the connection between this doubled model and the unsolved problem of the supersymmetric sine-Gordon kink structure.     

Concentration of sodium ion as the determining factor for the association of dansyl amino acids with the teicoplanin molecule in reversed-phase liquid chromatography

The mechanism of the binding of D,L dansyl amino acids to teicoplanin was investigated. Na+ was used as an indicator of the interactions between the solutes and teicoplanin. The number (n) of sodium ions, Na+, excluded from the solute-teicoplanin interface when analyte transfer occurred was determined. A thermodynamic study and enthalpy-entropy compensation were performed to further explore the interaction mechanism. From these results, it was shown that teicoplanin was balanced between 2 conformational states characterized by distinct enantioselective properties. This approach indicates that liquid chromatography (LC) is a useful tool to extract physicochemical and molecular information from retention data. Thus, LC can be used as a complementary technique with the conventional techniques of molecular interaction analysis.     

High-resolution heteronuclear correlation spectroscopy in solid state NMR of aligned samples

A new two-dimensional scheme is proposed for accurate measurements of high-resolution chemical shifts and heteronuclear dipolar couplings in NMR of aligned samples. Both the (1)H chemical shifts and the (1)H-(15)N dipolar couplings are evolved in the indirect dimension while the (15)N chemical shifts are detected. This heteronuclear correlation (HETCOR) spectroscopy yields high-resolution (1)H chemical shifts split by the (1)H-(15)N dipolar couplings in the indirect dimension and the (15)N chemical shifts in the observed dimension. The advantages of the HETCOR technique are illustrated for a static (15)N-acetyl-valine crystal sample and a (15)N-labeled helical peptide sample aligned in hydrated lipid bilayers.