Ethanol Dehydrogenation: A Reaction Path Study by Means of Temporal Analysis of Products

Conventional fossil fuels such as gasoline or diesel should be substituted in the future by environmentally-friendly alternatives in order to reduce emissions in the transport sector and thus mitigate global warming. In this regard, iso-butanol is very promising as its chemical and physical properties are very similar to those of gasoline. Therefore, ongoing research deals with the development of catalytically-supported synthesis routes to iso-butanol, starting from renewably-generated methanol. This research has already revealed that the dehydrogenation of ethanol plays an important role in the reaction sequence from methanol to iso-butanol. To improve the fundamental understanding of the ethanol dehydrogenation step, the Temporal Analysis of Products (TAP) methodology was applied to illuminate that the catalysts used, Pt/C, Ir/C and Cu/C, are very active in ethanol adsorption. H2 and acetaldehyde are formed on the catalyst surfaces, with the latter quickly decomposing into CO and CH4 under the given reaction conditions. Based on the TAP results, this paper proposes a reaction scheme for ethanol dehydrogenation and acetaldehyde decomposition on the respective catalysts. The samples are characterized by means of N2 sorption and Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy (STEM)