Acetic acid from CH4 and CO2 in a continuous, fixed-bed reactor over metal-supported catalysts

초록

The selective oxidation of methane is an attractive yet challenging pathway to convert abundant natural gas into value added chemicals. The conversion of CO2 requires consumption of hydrogen, while that of CH4 requires oxygen. Both of utilization of methane and CO2 are very challenging especially in the case of simultaneous activation to acetic acid due to simultaneous activation of C-H bond from methane and CO2 activation over the heterogeneous catalyst surface. And the simultaneous conversion of CH4 and CO2 to acetic acid consequently becomes an ideal coupling of an oxygenation reaction and a reduction reaction. Even though this conversion is thermodynamically unfavorable due to positive value of Gibbs free energy, homogeneous system as well as some heterogeneous catalysts such as Pd or Rh /Silica, Cu-Co-based catalysts gave the formation of acetic acid with the help of catalysts, but only in batch reaction and two-step reaction or step-wise route with alternative feeding of CO2 and CH4. Here, we are going to report on the formation of acetic acid in a continuous fixed-bed reaction with the flowing of both feeds over the metal supported nanocatalysts.