Theoretical study of propylene epoxidation heterogeneous-homogeneous mechanism over MoOx/SiO2 catalyst

The green direct propylene (C₃H₆) epoxidation on MoO_x is well studied by experimental methods, but detailed molecular reaction mechanism studies using in-silico experiments method are few. Here, the different oxidation heterogeneous-homogeneous pathways for MoO_x/SiO₂ catalyst are calculated, mainly involving Mo=O on di-oxo tetracoordinate MoO_x, allyl peroxy (C₃H₅OO•), and allyloxy (C₃H₅O•) radicals. The results show that, for surface reaction mechanism with Mo=O, the barriers of propylene oxide (PO) and acetone generation are too high; in comparison, the byproduct acrolein is more beneficial product with a lower barrier. In heterogeneous-homogeneous pathways, the desorbed allyl (C₃H₅•) from the surface can easily combine with O₂ to synthesize C₃H₅OO• radical, and in the partial oxidation of propylene with C₃H₅OO• as an oxidant, PO is more beneficial with a low barrier compared to byproducts such as propanal, acetone, acetaldehyde, etc. These indicate that (a) gas-phase free radical reactions have important effects on PO generation, in which C₃H₅OO• is the main active species; (b) on MoO_x surface, Mo=O is difficult to be used as the active O species for PO production. Further research is needed on other active sites such as Mo-O-Mo or defective sites.