Temporal Analysis of Products (TAP)—A Unique Catalyst Evaluation System with Submillisecond Time Resolution

TLDR

The need to accelerate heterogeneous catalyst development, especially for poorly defined mixed metal oxides, drives the creation of new surface analysis tools. We aim to improve the efficiency of metal oxide catalyst development. The TAP experiment monitors transient product formation with sub‑millisecond resolution to evaluate catalyst performance. TAP provides a rapid, sub‑millisecond‑resolution method for evaluating heterogeneous catalysts.

Abstract

Abstract The drive to develop new tools for surface analysis and catalyst evaluation is motivated in part by the need to enhance the rate of industrial heterogeneous catalyst development. Although a variety of model catalytic systems are known in considerable detail, the operation of many commercial catalysts remains an enigma and commercial catalyst development is still by and large a slow, painstaking process. This is particularly true for catalysts with poorly defined surfaces such as mixed metal oxides used in selective oxidation and ammoxidation. Because of the complexity of developing new metal oxide catalysts we began work directed toward improving the efficiency of the catalyst development process. The result of that work is a new catalyst evaluation technique which we call TAP (temporal analysis of products). This article describes the TAP experiment and illustrates with examples its utility in heterogeneous catalyst research.