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Molecular behaviour of phenol in zeolite Beta catalysts as a function of acid site presence: a quasielastic neutron scattering and molecular dynamics simulation study

Hernandez Tamargo, Carlos, O'Malley, Alexander, Silverwood, Ian P. and de Leeuw, Nora H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8271-0545 2019. Molecular behaviour of phenol in zeolite Beta catalysts as a function of acid site presence: a quasielastic neutron scattering and molecular dynamics simulation study. Catalysis Science and Technology 9 (23) , pp. 6700-6713. 10.1039/C9CY01548E

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Abstract

Quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) experiments complemented by classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations at 393–443 K were employed in a study of the mobility and interactions of phenol in acidic zeolite H-Beta, to understand systems relevant to potential routes for the depolymerization and hydrodeoxygenation of lignin. QENS experiments observed isotropic phenol rotation with a fraction of static molecules, yielding rotational diffusion coefficients between 2.60 × 1010 and 3.33 × 1010 s−1 and an activation energy of rotation of 7.2 kJ mol−1. The MD simulations of phenol in the acidic and all-silica zeolite corroborate the experimental results, where molecules strongly adsorbed to the acidic sites behave as an immobile fraction with minimal contribution to the rotational diffusion, and the mobile molecules yield similar rotational diffusion coefficients to experiment. Translational diffusion is too slow to be detected in the instrumental time window of the QENS experiments, which is supported by MD-calculated activation energies of translation larger than 25 kJ mol−1. The study illustrates the effect of active sites in potential catalyst structures on the dynamical behaviour of molecules relevant to biomass conversion.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Chemistry
Advanced Research Computing @ Cardiff (ARCCA)
Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
ISSN: 2044-4753
Funders: EPSRC, NERC
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 6 November 2019
Date of Acceptance: 19 September 2019
Last Modified: 20 May 2023 04:34
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/126621

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