Confined Cu-OH single sites in SSZ-13 zeolite for the direct oxidation of methane to methanol.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38001068.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-43508-4 and PMC identifier 10673993.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The direct oxidation of methane to methanol (MTM) remains a significant challenge in heterogeneous catalysis due to the high dissociation energy of the C-H bond in methane and the high desorption energy of methanol. In this work, we demonstrate a breakthrough in selective MTM by achieving a high methanol space-time yield of 2678 mmol molCu-1 h-1 with 93% selectivity in a continuous methane-steam reaction at 400 °C. The superior performance is attributed to the confinement effect of 6-membered ring (6MR) voids in SSZ-13 zeolite, which host isolated Cu-OH single sites. Our results provide a deeper understanding of the role of Cu-zeolites in continuous methane-steam to methanol conversion and pave the way for further improvement.