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The kinetic effects of co-feeding of dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) and hydrogen on propane dehydrogenation (PDH) over the Pt-Sn-K/Al 2 O 3 catalyst were investigated by the response surface method. The 3-level Box-Behnken design for 4 factors (reaction temperature, propene, hydrogen, and DMDS flow rate) was used to design the experiment. The initial propane conversion, propene selectivity, and coking amount were chosen as responses and the results were fitted by quadratic models. The fresh and coked catalysts were characterized by high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM), scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), thermogravimetry (TG), N 2 physisorption, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) results showed that the DMDS flow rate is significant for propane conversion and coking amount while hydrogen flow rate is only significant for the conversion. By using the fitted model for the response surface, it is found that DMDS can significantly reduce the coking amount at the expense of propane conversion, and hydrogen weakly affects the selectivity and coking amount. The optimal conditions to achieve maximum conversion and selectivity and minimum coking amount are not consistent. The DMDS and hydrogen flow rate should be optimized to obtain the maximum economic profit out of the propane dehydrogenation (PDH) process., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

Hydrogen transport on transition-metal oxides is a shared process in many important physical and chemical changes of interest. In this work, DFT + U calculations have been carried out to explore the mechanism for hydrogen migration on the defect-free and oxygen-deficient LaMO 3 (001) (M = Cr, Mn, and Fe) surfaces. The calculated results indicate that hydrogen is preferentially adsorbed at the oxygen sites on all surfaces other than the defective LaCrO 3 (001), where the occupation of vacancies is energetically most favorable. The resultant O-H bonds would be weakened when oxygen vacancies are formed in their immediate vicinity because the increased electron density on the remaining ions would limit the ability of O to withdraw electrons from H. On defect-free LaMO 3 (001), hydrogen prefers to migrate along the [010] axis, during which the O-H bond is reoriented at the oxygen site for the hopping to proceed by the Grotthuss mechanism. In the presence of oxygen vacancies, the vehicle mechanism in which hydrogen hops together with the underlying oxygen would dominate on LaMnO 3 and LaFeO 3 , whereas on the defective LaCrO 3 (001) the Grotthuss mechanism prevails. The linear scaling relations established show that the hydrogen and hydroxyl migration barriers decrease and increase, respectively, with increasing the strength of ionic bonding in perovskites, which provides a rational interpretation of the change in the preferred hydrogen migration mechanism.

The exposed termination of transition-metal oxide surfaces plays a major role in determining the catalyst performance in redox reactions. In this contribution, the surface phase diagrams of LaMO 3 (001) (M = Sc-Fe) and LaMO 3 (110) (M = Co-Cu) are constructed by using the DFT+U method. The stabilities of six terminations derived from the stoichiometric MO 2 and LaO surfaces are determined over a wide range of temperatures and oxygen partial pressures. The surface phase diagrams are calculated towards the O-rich limit in which the chemical potential of oxygen anions of perovskites equals that of gas-phase oxygen while the chemical potential of M cations is limited by thermodynamic boundary conditions. It is found that the surface phase diagrams are closely related to the reducibility of M cations, which is reflected in the oxygen adsorption energy and oxygen vacancy formation energy on the MO 2 - and LaO-terminated surfaces and can be measured by the third ionization energies of the M 2+ cations. According to the surface phase diagrams, the most stable surface termination is predicted to be of MO 2 type for LaMO 3 (M = Sc-Fe) and LaO type for LaMO 3 (M = Co-Cu) under solid oxide fuel cell operating conditions. Because the M cations become more readily reduced on going from left to right across the period, LaCoO 3 may form an oxygen-deficient crystal structure at high temperatures and LaNiO 3 and LaCuO 3 would be decomposed into oxides containing the transition metals in a lower oxidation state.

The recently developed BEEF-vdW exchange-correlation method provides a reasonably reliable description of both long-range van der Waals interactions and short-range covalent bonding between molecules and surfaces. However, this method still suffers from the excessive electron delocalization that is connected with the self-interaction error and, consequently, the calculated chemical and physical properties such as formation energy and band gap deviate markedly from the experimental values, especially when strongly correlated systems are under investigation. In this contribution, BEEF-vdW+U calculations have been performed to study the thermodynamic, structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of La-based perovskites. An effective interaction parameter [Formula: see text] and an energy adjustment [Formula: see text] are determined simultaneously by a mixing GGA and GGA+U method, where the enthalpy or Gibbs free energy of formation of oxides containing a transition metal in different oxidation states are fitted to available experimental data. The [Formula: see text] is found to have its origin in the fact that the GGA+U method gives rise to the offsets in the total energy that include not only the desired physical correction but also an arbitrary contribution. Calculated results indicate that the BEEF-vdW method provides a more accurate description of the bonding in the O 2 molecule than the PBE method and has generally smaller [Formula: see text] values for the 3d-block transition metals, thereby giving rise to band gaps and magnetic moments that are in better agreement with the experimentally measured values.

Conical carbon nanofibers (CNFs) exist primarily as graphitic ribbons that fold into a cylindrical structure with the formation of a hollow core. Structural analysis aided by molecular modeling proves useful for obtaining a full picture of how the size of the central channel varies from fiber to fiber. From a geometrical perspective, conical CNFs possibly have cone tips that are nearly closed. On the other hand, their fiber wall thickness can be reduced to a minimum possible value that is determined solely by the apex angle, regardless of the outer diameter. A formula has been developed to express the number of carbon atoms present in conical CNFs in terms of measurable structural parameters. It appears that the energetically preferred fiber wall thickness increases not only with the apex angle, but also with the number of atoms in the constituent graphitic cones. The origin of the empirical observation that conical CNFs with small apex angles tend to have a large hollow core lies in the fact that in graphene sheets that are more highly curved the curvature-induced strain energy rises more rapidly as the fiber wall thickens.

Self-consistent periodic slab calculations based on gradient-corrected density functional theory (DFT-GGA) have been conducted to examine the reaction network of propane dehydrogenation over close-packed Pt(111) and stepped Pt(211) surfaces. Selective C-H or C-C bond cleaving is investigated to gain a better understanding of the catalyst site requirements for propane dehydrogenation. The energy barriers for the dehydrogenation of propane to form propylene are calculated to be in the region of 0.65-0.75 eV and 0.25-0.35 eV on flat and stepped surfaces, respectively. Likewise, the activation of the side reactions such as the deep dehydrogenation and cracking of C(3) derivatives depends strongly on the step density, arising from the much lower energy barriers on Pt(211). Taking the activation energy difference between propylene dehydrogenation and propylene desorption as the descriptor, we find that while step sites play a crucial role in the activation of propane dehydrogenation, the selectivity towards propylene is substantially lowered in the presence of the coordinatively unsaturated surface Pt atoms. As the sole C(3) derivative which prefers the cleavage of the C-C bond to the C-H bond breaking, propyne is suggested to be the starting point for the C-C bond breaking which eventually gives rise to the formation of ethane, methane and coke. These findings provide a rational interpretation of the recent experimental observations that smaller Pt particles containing more step sites are much more active but less selective than larger particles in propane dehydrogenation.