Fool’s gold to improve catalysts
16 Feb 2012 by Evoluted New Media
Fool’s gold may hold the key to better catalytic material
Iron pyrite – or Fool’s gold – could be an unlikely alternative to overexploited catalytic materials say researchers from the University of Cambridge.
Using state-of-the-art electronic structure calculations – density functional theory (DFT) – researchers explored the potential catalytic activity of iron pyrite (FeS2), the most abundant sulphur mineral on Earth. Sulphur was believed to be one of the most detrimental elements for surface chemical reactions because it reduces the reactivity of the catalyst by poisoning the active site on the material.
Recently some sulphur materials like molybdenum sulphides have been shown to have interesting catalytic properties of their own. Researchers focussed on reactions between iron pyrite and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
“Recent European legislation has proposed increasingly strict legislative limits on the concentration of NOx that can be emitted by vehicles; therefore the search for new and more efficient catalysts that can capture these molecules and transform them into innocuous gases such as nitrogen and water vapour, is urgently relevant,” said Dr Marco Sacchi, first author of the paper published in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.
The next step for the researchers will be to investigate the activity of pyrite surfaces for strategically important industrial reactions, such as the extraction of hydrocarbon for use in future fuel cell electric vehicles, the manufacture of ammonia for fertilisers and the production of synthetic hydrocarbon fuels from renewable biomass.
“The necessity of finding reliable alternatives to overexploited catalytic materials – such as platinum, rhodium and gold – will soon become unavoidable,” said Sacchi. “We hope that our work will ultimately allow us to test the potential for catalytic application of a wide range of sulphidic and carbidic materials.”
