Effects of CO and H2O Co-Feed on the Adsorption and Oxidation Properties of a Pd/BEA Hydrocarbon Trap

Hydrocarbon traps for exhaust emissions control adsorb hydrocarbons in low temperature exhaust and release them as the exhaust warms up. In this work, a Pd/BEA hydrocarbon trap was tested under lean exhaust conditions using ethylene and dodecane as model hydrocarbons. Ethylene uptake was partially inhibited by CO and H2O when fed separately. When both were added, the loss in ethylene uptake was 90% relative to the condition with no H2O or CO. Dodecane uptake was unchanged under all conditions tested. During a temperature ramp, ethylene desorbed and was combusted to CO2 and H2O over active Pd centers. Further, oxidation light-off of dodecane generated an exotherm which caused rapid desorption of the remaining hydrocarbon species from the zeolite. For both hydrocarbons, CO co-feed led to a decreased oxidation light-off temperature, and therefore lower desorption temperature. By pretreating the catalyst in CO and H2O at 80 °C, and even after removing CO from the feed, the enhanced oxidation light-off behavior was observed. DRIFTS characterization shows that some form of oxidized Pd was reducible to Pd0 by CO at 80 °C only in the presence of H2O. Further, this reduction appears reversible by high temperature oxygen treatment. We speculate that this reduced Pd phase serves as the active site for low temperature hydrocarbon oxidation.

Magnetic Modeling and Potential Hydrocarbon Trap Over Yola and Environs Upper Benue Trough Northeastern Nigeria

With a renewed interest to search for hydrocarbons in the hinter land of Nigeria’s inland basin climaxed after the discovery of a rewarding oil prospects around the Kolmani river II as recently announced by the National Oil Company, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). This research was based on analyzing the high-resolution aeromagnetic data over the study area using the Oasis Montaj TM software, in order to get the total magnetic intensity map as well as the residual map, band pass filter map was used to generate magnetic aureoles. GM-SYS module of the Oasis montaj was used for the modeling exercise, the models reveal the horst and graben architecture of the basement with the grabens serving as depocentres, hydrocarbon potentials of the area were highlighted using magnetic aureoles mapping.