A novel silver catalyst prepared by using superheated-steam as a heating medium for ethylene oxide production

A high-performance catalyst for the production of ethylene oxide by vapor phase oxidation of ethylene was developed and commercialized. High performance was achieved by the usage of a high surface area carrier with controlled pore distribution and surface acid-base properties, by the adoption of mixed amines to dissolve heat-decomposable silver salt, by the addition of effective additives, and by the introduction of a uniquely developed heat-treatment technology using superheated-steam as the heating medium. The catalyst thus prepared showed high activities because of homogeneously and highly dispersed silver and additive elements within the carrier. As a result, the reaction temperature could be lowered, which led to the improvement of not only the selectivity but also the catalyst life. Heat treatment with superheated-steam proved to have many advantages in producing high-performance catalysts and it is commercially favorable because it needs only a very short processing time.     

Polarization Rotation in the Monoclinic Perovskite BiCo(1-x) Fe(x) O(3)

The monoclinic perovskite BiCo(1-x) Fe(x) O(3) (x≈0.7) undergoes a second-order structural transition from tetragonal to monoclinic, which is accompanied by a rotation of the polarization vector from the [001] to [111] directions of a pseudo cubic cell. The crystal structure, determined by electron diffraction and powder synchrotron X-ray diffraction, was the same as that of Pb(Ti(1-x) Zr(x) )O(3) at the morphotropic phase boundary.     

Density functional study of ethylene oxidation on an Ag(111) surface

The mechanism of ethylene epoxidation on Ag surfaces has been investigated using the density functional method and Ag _n clusters (n = 3 to 10) modeling the Ag(111) surface. The adsorption energy of O₂ to the Ag clusters was strongly dependent on the HOMO level of the cluster, and the clusters with higher HOMO levels afforded larger O₂ adsorption energies. The energetics was investigated for both the molecular and atomic oxygen epoxidation mechanisms. For the atomic oxygen mechanism, epoxidation was found to proceed without an activation energy, whereas a small amount of activation energy (about 5 kcal/mol) was calculated for the molecular oxygen mechanism. Received: 2 July 1998 / Accepted: 9 September 1998 / Published online: 8 February 1999