Selective hydrogenation of acetylene over Pd on glass fiber catalysts

Key properties of silicate glasses are highlighted including the capability of stabilizing disperse Pd nanoparticles in the bulk of glass fibers (GF), high solubility of acetylene and hydrogen, as well as their high mobility. These properties provide the high activity and selectivity of Pd/GF catalysts to hydrogenation of acetylene in excess ethylene over a wide range of acetylene conversions up to its complete one. For a wide variety of mono-, bimetallic systems including catalysts with single palladium atoms, TOF was established to depend only slightly on the palladium dispersion and support nature, i.e. the reaction can be considered structure-insensitive. Nevertheless, a TOF decrease was observed in the systems with single atoms; that was accounted for by declining of the hydrogen dissociation rate or its slower spillover. Isotope-kinetic data were used for determining quantitatively undesirable contributions to the process selectivity caused by both hydrogenation of acetylene and gas-phase ethylene to ethane. High selectivities of alloyed bimetallic systems comprising isolated palladium atoms at approaching to the complete conversion of acetylene were caused by the low rate of hydrogenation of weakly adsorbed ethylene to ethane while for Pd/GF catalysts by the complete exclusion of the hydrogenation of ethylene from gas-phase.