II International Symposium on Carbon for Catalysis ABSTRACTS

PP-I-49
TAILORING CARBON NANOFIBER SURFACE PROPERTY FOR EFFICIENT
Pd/CNF CATALYST IN TA HYDROPURIFICATION
Zhou J., Sui Z., Li P., Chen D. 1 , Dai Y., Yuan W.
UNILAB State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, East China University of Science &
Technology, Shanghai, 200237, P. R. China
1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology,
Sem Slands vei 4, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway
e-mai:, jhzhou@ecust.edu.cn
The unique properties of carbon nanofiber, a novel structured carbon material developed
in the past two decades, have generated a large number of applications including selective
absorption, energy storage, polymer reinforcement, and catalyst supports [1]. In a previous
paper [2], we supported palladium on CNFs and developed a highly active catalyst for
terephthalic acid (TA) hydropurification. However we did not focus on the effect of surface
property of the CNF support on the catalyst activity for crude TA hydrogenation.
This paper deals with modification and characterization of surface properties of platelet
CNFs. The hidden motivation was that surface properties of CNFs could affect not only
interactions between the active metal and the support but also the activity of the supported
catalyst [3]. Indeed increasing studies on carbon supported catalysts have shown that tailoring
of catalyst properties to meet a specific need depends on how the physical and chemical
properties of the carbon surface are tuned [4].
CNFs of platelet nanostructure were synthesized in our laboratory using the catalytically
chemically vapor deposition (CCVD) with which carbon monoxide was decomposed on
ultrafine iron powder under optimized conditions. The as-synthesized platelet CNFs were
repeatedly demineralized in 4M HCl at 60 o C 5 times, each for about 1 h, to remove the
remaining iron. The treated CNFs then underwent surface modification to obtain materials of
different surface properties by different chemical and thermal treatments including treatment
in gas such as air, argon, or hydrogen and in liquid such as hydrogen peroxide, acetone, or
concentrated nitric acid. The modified CNFs were designated as C1 to C6 as in Table 1.
CNF supported palladium catalysts (0.5%Pd) were prepared via a standard incipient
impregnation method using Pd(NH 3 ) 4 Cl 2 as a palladium precursor. Their catalytic
performance for the crude TA hydropurification was evaluated based on
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