E.G. Derouane

Francisco Lemos

Valentin Parmon

Fernando Ramoa Ribeiro

Energy and feedstock materials for the chemical industry are in increasing demand and, with constraints related to the availability and use of oil, the energy and chemical industry is undergoing considerable changes. In recent years, major restructuring has occurred in the oil, petrochemical, and chemical industry, with increasing attention devoted to the use of natural gas, methane in particular, as a chemical feedstock rather than just as a fuel. The conversion of remote natural gas into liquid fuels or other transportable chemicals is a challenge to industrial catalysis. Few processes exist so far with the major ones involving the conversion of natural gas to synthesis gas by steam reforming, CO2 reforming, or partial oxidation, followed by the syntheses of methanol, hydrocarbons (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis), or ammonia. In this book, a comprehensive overview of the field of processing natural gas is given, through a series of chapters written by leading scientists and engineers in the field. New developments are discussed and current work relevant to the area is shown by a series of recent works by researchers working in this and related fields.

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, held in Vilamoura, Portugal, July 6 - 18, 2003

Sustainable Strategies for the Upgrading of Natural Gas: Fundamentals, Challenges, and Opportunities

B. Delmon

J.P. Bonnelle

In the field of heterogeneous catalysis. it is convenient to distinguish. in a perfectly unjustified and over··simplified way. bet:leen metal catalysts. 2nd the other catalysts. The fj.J"st are easy to define : they are those in which a reduced metal is the active phase. It is thus easy to circumscribe. by exclusion, the other class namely the "non-metals". We have adopted this definition for the sake of our colleagues working on catalysis by metals, and to avoid a lengthy title like "sm' face pl"operties and catalysts by transi tion metal oxides. sulftdes, carbides, nitriles, etc. Defined in this manner, non-metal catalysts represented, in 1980, 84 wt. % of the industrial heterogeneous catalysts. To be more specific, this proportion corresponds to catalysts which, under the working conditions in the industrial ?lant. contain their catalytically active metallic elements in a non-reduced state. It should however be recalled that most metal catalysts are supported on oxides, which, often, repl'esent over 90% (sometimes 99.4% in the case of the platinum reforming catalysts) of the total weight.

Surface Properties and Catalysis by Non-Metals

Claude Naccache

Fernando Ramôa Ribeiro

Intensive research on zeolites, during the past thirty years, has resulted in a deep understanding of their chemistry and in a true zeolite science, including synthesis, structure, chemical and physical properties, and catalysis. These studies are the basis for the development and growth of several industrial processes applying zeolites for selective sorption, separation, and catalysis. In 1983, a NATO Advanced Study Institute was organized in Alcabideche (portugal) to establish the State-of-the-Art in Zeolite Science and Technology and to contribute to a better understanding of the structural properties of zeolites, the configurational constraints they may exert, and their effects in adsorption, diffusion, and catalysis. Since then, zeolite science has witnessed an almost exponential growth in published papers and patents, dealing with both fundamentals issues and original applications. The proposal of new procedures for zeolite synthesis, the development of novel and sophisticated physical techniques for zeolite characterization, the discovery of new zeolitic and related microporous materials, progresses in quantum chemistry and molecular modeling of zeolites, and the application of zeolites as catalysts for organic reactions have prompted increasing interest among the scientific community. An important and harmonious interaction between various domains of Physics, Chemistry, and Engineering resulted therefrom.

Zeolite Microporous Solids: Synthesis, Structure, and Reactivity

Denise Barthomeuf

Wolfgang Hölderich

Low dimensionality is a multifarious concept which applies to very diversified materials. Thus, examples of low-dimensional systems are structures with one or several layers, single lines or patterns of lines, and small clusters isolated or dispersed in solid systems. Such low dimensional features can be produced in a wide variety of materials systems with a broad spectrum of scientific and practical interests. These features, in turn, induce specific properties and, particularly, specific transport properties. In the case of zeolites, low dimensionality appears in the network of small-diameter pores of molecular size, extending in one, two or three di mensions, that these solids exhibit as a characteristic feature and which explains the term of "molecular sieves" currently used to name these ma terials. Indeed, a large number of industrial processes for separation of gases and liquids, and for catalysis are based upon the use of this low dimensional feature in zeolites. For instance, zeolites constitute the first class of catalysts employed allover the world. Because of the peculiarity and flexibility of their structure (and composition), zeolites can be adapted to suit many specific and diversified applications. For this reason, zeolites are presently the object of a large and fast-growing interest among chemists and chemical engineers.

Relationship between the Physicochemical Properties of Zeolitic Systems and Their Low Dimensionality

Guidelines for Mastering the Properties of Molecular Sieves

Arthur W. Chester

The idea for putting together a tutorial on zeolites came originally from my co-editor, Eric Derouane, about 5 years ago. I ?rst met Eric in the mid-1980s when he spent 2 years working for Mobil R&D at our then Corporate lab at Princeton, NJ. He was on the senior technical staff with projects in the synthesis and characterization of new materials. At that time, I managed a group at our Paulsboro lab that was responsible for catalyst characterization in support of our catalyst and process development efforts, and also had a substantial group working on new material synthesis. Hence, our interests overlapped considerably and we met regularly. After Eric moved back to Namur (initially), we maintained contact, and in the 1990s, we met a number of times in Europe on projects of joint interest. It was after I retired from ExxonMobil in 2002 that we began to discuss the tutorial concept seriously. Eric had (semi-)retired and lived on the Algarve, the southern coast of Portugal. In January 2003, my wife and I spent 3 weeks outside of Lagos, and I worked parts of most days with Eric on the proposed content of the book. We decided on a comprehensive approach that ultimately amounted to some 20+ chapters covering all of zeolite chemistry and catalysis and gave it the title Zeolite Chemistry and Catalysis: An integrated Approach and Tutorial.

E.G. Derouane

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