Issue 20, 2024

Mechanistic understanding of the thermal-assisted photocatalytic oxidation of methanol-to-formaldehyde with water vapor over Pt/SrTiO3

Abstract

Anaerobic thermal-assisted photocatalytic methanol conversion in the gas phase in the presence of water vapor has been suggested as an interesting way to generate formaldehyde as a valuable coupled product in addition to H2 production. Here, the reaction mechanism and photocatalyst deactivation are investigated in detail using in situ diffuse reflectance infrared fourier transform (DRIFTS) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. EPR shows that paramagnetic oxygen vacancies are not involved in the reaction mechanism over undoped SrTiO3. Instead, on an optimized 0.1 wt% Pt/SrTiO3 photocatalyst, methoxy species are formed by dissociative adsorption of methanol leading to formaldehyde formation while the formation of CO, CO2 (via a formate intermediate) and methyl formate occurs through three concurrent reactions from formyl species. Our findings suggest that CO adsorbed on Pt is a spectator species not perturbing the reaction kinetics, and deactivation is shown to be strongly correlated with the accumulation of formate groups on SrTiO3, which is more pronounced at high reaction temperatures. The mechanistic understanding provided here forms the basis for the further optimization of photocatalysts to increase methanol conversion and improve formaldehyde selectivity.

Graphical abstract: Mechanistic understanding of the thermal-assisted photocatalytic oxidation of methanol-to-formaldehyde with water vapor over Pt/SrTiO3

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
14 3 2024
Accepted
03 5 2024
First published
03 5 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2024,26, 14960-14969

Mechanistic understanding of the thermal-assisted photocatalytic oxidation of methanol-to-formaldehyde with water vapor over Pt/SrTiO3

M. Deitermann, T. Sato, Y. Haver, A. Schnegg, M. Muhler and B. T. Mei, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2024, 26, 14960 DOI: 10.1039/D4CP01106F

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