Identifying the nature of the active sites in methanol synthesis over Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalysts

Laudenschleger et al, Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 3898 (2020) Reproduced with permission from Springer Nature

The article shows that Zn species in typical methanol synthesis catalyst Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 are not metallic, but have a positively charged nature under industrial methanol synthesis conditions. The kinetic results based on a new method allowed to perform surface-sensitive operando investigations as a function of the reaction conditions, demonstrating that the rate of methanol formation is only decreased in CO2-containing syngas mixtures when pulsing NH3 or methylamines as basic probe molecules. Full details of the open access article are available via
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17631-5