The influence of water on the oxygen–silver interaction and on the oxidative dehydrogenation of methanol

Abstract

Experiments carried out using temperature-programmed desorption and reduction could detect no interaction between water and silver at 200 °C. However, separate experiments on the effect of water on the oxidative dehydrogenation of methanol over a silver catalyst showed that water affected the selectivity of the reaction, reducing the production of CO₂. It is suggested that this change in selectivity arises from the adsorption of water on the weakly bound oxygen surface species which are responsible for the non-selective reaction to CO₂. The interaction is apparently too weak to give rise to observable species in the t.p.d. and t.p.r. experiments.