Oxycarbonylation of methanol over modified CuY: Enhanced activity by improving accessibility of active sites

摘要

CuY zeolite is a promising catalyst in the field of manufacturing dimethyl carbonate(DMC) through oxidative carbonylation of methanol. Cu^+ exchanged with Br?nsted acid sites are supposed to be active for this reaction. However, the location of Cu^+ in small cages can not interact with reactants because of steric hindrance, which lead to a waste of Cu species. In this work, NH_4F solution was used to modify the pore structure of zeolite Y by etching the framework T atoms. Physical and chemical adsorption of probe molecules with different size are used to determine the changes of porosity as well as the accessibility of Cu^+ sites. At an optimized etching time, the small cages were opened with maintained zeolitic framework. As a result, more Cu^+ species located in small cages become accessible to reactants, which contributes to the enhanced activity in this reaction.