A Single Turnover (STO) Characterization of Supported Palladium Catalysts

While the STO catalyst characterization procedure has been applied to a variety of supported Pt catalysts, application of this technique to the characterization of supported Pd catalysts showed that there were several significant differences between the Pt and the Pd catalysts. Under STO reaction conditions each surface site on a Pt catalyst reacts only once so there is a 1:1 relationship between the product composition and the densities of the various types of active sites present. With Pd catalysts under these same conditions, alkene isomerization takes place so readily that the amount of isomerized product formed depends on the contact time of the reactant pulse with the catalyst so there is no direct relationship between the amount of isomerization and the number of isomerization sites present. On Pt there are some direct saturation sites present on which H2 is rather weakly held. Such sites are not present on Pd catalysts. The reactive surface of supported Pt catalysts remains constant on long exposure to air. With Pd catalysts exposure to air results in a decrease in saturation site densities which can be reversed by re-reduction of the surface with H2 under ambient conditions but not completely under what can be termed “reaction conditions” where the extent of surface re-reduction decreases with catalyst age.