Kinetics Insights and Active Sites Discrimination of Pd-Catalyzed Selective Hydrogenation of Acetylene

Renaissance in Alkyne Semihydrogenation: Mechanism, Selectivity, Functional Group Tolerance, and Applications in Organic Synthesis

Alkenes constitute a significant class of chemical compounds with applications in the bulk, pharmaceutical, or perfume industry. Among the known methods of olefin production, semihydrogenation of the C-C triple bond seems to be the most straightforward one. Nonetheless, the success of this reaction requires full control over diastereoselectivity, eradication of a parasitic process of over-reduction or migration of the C-C double bond formed, and achieving satisfactory functional-group compatibility. The review demonstrates developments in the field of alkyne semihydrogenation over the period 2010-2022, with selected papers published in 2023 and 2024, emphasizing solutions to the above-mentioned limitations. We discuss mechanistic aspects of this transformation, including those related to unconventional systems. The review includes examples of applications of alkyne semihydrogenation in organic synthesis, confirming the considerable utility of this process. Finally, strategies to enhance catalyst selectivity are summarized. For the reader's convenience, we provided a graphical guidebook to catalytic systems, illustrating the efficiency of the particular method.

Pd catalysts doped with B/C atoms in the subsurface: the positive effect of interstitial atoms in regulating the selectivity of acetylene catalytic hydrogenation

At present, the modification of palladium (Pd) catalysts is an important topic due to its potential to enhance catalytic performance and reduce catalyst costs. In this work, boron (B) and carbon (C) are interstitially doped into the subsurface of Pd to construct Pd4LB2L and Pd4LC2L catalysts. The adsorption properties of acetylene and ethylene, the mechanism of acetylene hydrogenation, and ethylene selectivity are studied based on density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The results show that the ethylene selectivity of the Pd4LB2L catalyst is significantly enhanced compared with that of Pd(111). The adsorption of CH2CH2 is weakened substantially after B element doping, and the ethylene selectivity descriptor (Esel) value of the Pd4LB2L catalyst reaches 19.7 kJ mol-1. It is revealed that non-metallic atoms doped into the subsurface layer of metal catalysts change the adsorption of reactant/intermediate molecules and the selectivity of ethylene by affecting the electronic structure and properties of Pd atoms in the surface layer. This work provides insights into the selectivity of modified Pd-based catalysts for selective hydrogenation of acetylene and realization of cost-effective catalysts.

Enhancing Catalytic Performance through Subsurface Chemistry: The Case of C2H2 Semihydrogenation over Pd Catalysts

Subsurface chemistry in heterogeneous catalysis plays an important role in tuning catalytic performance. Aiming to unravel the role of subsurface heteroatoms, C₂H₂ semihydrogenation on a series of Pd catalysts doped with subsurface heteroatom H, B, C, N, P, or S was fully investigated by density functional theory (DFT) calculations together with microkinetic modeling. The obtained results showed that catalytic performance toward C₂H₂ semihydrogenation was affected significantly by the type and coverage of subsurface heteroatoms. The Pd-B_0.5 and Pd-C_0.5 catalysts with 1/2 monolayer (ML) heteroatom coverage, as well as Pd-N, Pd-P, and Pd-S catalysts with 1/16 ML heteroatom coverage, were screened to not only obviously improve C₂H₄ selectivity and activity but also effectively suppress green oil. The essential reason for subsurface heteroatoms in tuning catalytic performance is attributed to the distinctive surface Pd electronic and geometric structures caused by subsurface heteroatoms. In the Pd-B_0.5 and Pd-C_0.5 catalysts, the Pd surface electronic and geometric effects play the dominant role, while the geometric effect plays a key role in the Pd-N, Pd-P, and Pd-S catalysts. The findings provide theoretically valuable information for designing high-performance metal catalysts in alkyne semihydrogenation through subsurface chemistry.

Mesokinetics as a Tool Bridging the Microscopic-to-Macroscopic Transition to Rationalize Catalyst Design

Heterogeneous catalysis is the workhorse of the chemical industry, and a heterogeneous catalyst possesses numerous active sites working together to drive the conversion of reactants to desirable products. Over the decades, much focus has been placed on identifying the factors affecting the active sites to gain deep insights into the structure-performance relationship, which in turn guides the design and preparation of more active, selective, and stable catalysts. However, the molecular-level interplay between active sites and catalytic function still remains qualitative or semiquantitative, ascribed to the difficulty and uncertainty in elucidating the nature of active sites for its controllable manipulation. Hence, bridging the microscopic properties of active sites and the macroscopic catalytic performance, that is, microscopic-to-macroscopic transition, to afford a quantitative description is intriguing yet challenging, and progress toward this promises to revolutionize catalyst design and preparation.In this Account, we propose mesokinetics modeling, for the first time enabling a quantitative description of active site characteristics and the related mechanistic information, as a versatile tool to guide rational catalyst design. Exemplified by a pseudo-zero-order reaction, the kinetics derivation from the Pt particle size-sensitive catalytic activity and size-insensitive activation energy suggests only one type of surface site as the dominant active site, in which the Pt(111) with almost unchanged turnover frequency (TOF₁₁₁) is further identified as the dominating active site. Such a method has been extended to identify and quantify the number (N_i) of active sites for various thermo-, electro-, and photocatalysts in chemical synthesis, hydrogen generation, environment application, etc. Then, the kinetics derivation from the kinetic compensation effects suggests a thermodynamic balance between the activation entropy and enthalpy, which exhibit linear dependences on Pt charge. Accordingly, the Pt charge can serve as a catalytic descriptor for its quantitative determination of TOF_i. This strategy has been further applied to Pt-catalyzed CO oxidation with nonzero-order reaction characteristic by taking the site coverages of surface species into consideration.Hence, substituting the above statistical correlations of N_i and TOF_i into the rate equation R = ∑N_i × TOF_i offers the mesokinetics model, which can precisely predict catalytic function and screen catalysts. Finally, based on the disentanglement of the factors underlying Pt electronic structures, a de novo strategy, from the interfacial charge distribution to reaction mechanism, kinetics, and thermodynamics parameters of the rate-determining step, and ultimately catalytic performance, is developed to map the unified mechanistic and kinetics picture of reaction. Overall, the mesokinetics not only demonstrates much potential to elucidate the quantitative interplay between active sites and catalytic activity but also provides a new research direction in kinetics analysis to rationalize catalyst design.

Atomically Dispersed Pd Atoms on a Simple MgO Support with an Ultralow Loading for Selective Hydrogenation of Acetylene to Ethylene

We report a simple and efficient Pd/MgO catalyst loaded with ppm level of Pd (7.8 ppm) for semi-hydrogenation of acetylene to ethylene. The catalyst showed excellent performance with high acetylene conversion (97%), high ethylene selectivity (89%) and good stability. Moreover, the atomically dispersed Pd atoms are inactive for ethylene hydrogenation. Isotopic and FTIR results suggest that H₂ dissociates at isolated Pd atoms in a heterolytic manner forming O-H bond, which may account for the high selectivity.

An experimental approach for controlling confinement effects at catalyst interfaces

Catalysts are conventionally designed with a focus on enthalpic effects, manipulating the Arrhenius activation energy. This approach ignores the possibility of designing materials to control the entropic factors that determine the pre-exponential factor. Here we investigate a new method of designing supported Pt catalysts with varying degrees of molecular confinement at the active site. Combining these with fast and precise online measurements, we analyse the kinetics of a model reaction, the platinum-catalysed hydrolysis of ammonia borane. We control the environment around the Pt particles by erecting organophosphonic acid barriers of different heights and at different distances. This is done by first coating the particles with organothiols, then coating the surface with organophosphonic acids, and finally removing the thiols. The result is a set of catalysts with well-defined "empty areas" surrounding the active sites. Generating Arrhenius plots with >300 points each, we then compare the effects of each confinement scenario. We show experimentally that confining the reaction influences mainly the entropy part of the enthalpy/entropy trade-off, leaving the enthalpy unchanged. Furthermore, we find this entropy contribution is only relevant at very small distances (<3 Å for ammonia borane), where the "empty space" is of a similar size to the reactant molecule. This suggests that confinement effects observed over larger distances must be enthalpic in nature.