Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering Graduate Seminar Series
About the event
Motahare Athariboroujeny earned her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from her home country, Iran. While doing her undergraduate study, she actively participated in Chem-E-Car competitions and also performed an undergraduate research in catalysis laboratories for MTG processes.
She started the chemical engineering doctorate program at Washington State University in the fall of 2014, under Dr. Norbert Kruse supervision. In addition to performing her research, she also has played several leadership roles at the university level. She was appointed as a GPSA representative on the Professional Development Initiative committee (2016) with the aim of supporting students succeed both professionally and academically. Next, she continued her leadership experience as director of grants and scholarship at GPSA and she won the Leadership, Engagement Awards of Distinction in April 2018. Motahare’s research focus is studying the mechanism of CO hydrogenation reaction for cobalt based catalysts. She has presented her research at the annual meetings of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. She also received a prestigious Kokes Award from the North American Catalysis Society to give an oral presentation at its conference in 2017.
Applying Chemical Transient Kinetics to understand mechanism of CO hydrogenation reaction over cobalt based catalysts
Supported cobalt catalysts have been widely used for CO hydrogenation under Fischer Tropsch synthesis conditions to produce fuel-type hydrocarbons and alcohols. Despite extensive studies on the mechanism of this reaction, a generally accepted reaction mechanism is still not available. C-C coupling and CO-insertion yet remain the two main mechanisms considered for the reaction. The distinguishing feature of these two mechanisms is whether cleavage of the C-O bond in the CO molecule occurs before (leading to C-C coupling) or after incorporation of the C1 monomer (CO-insertion) into the growing hydrocarbon chain. We have applied Chemical Transient Kinetics (CTK) to scrutinize which of the mechanistic suggestions are in operation under reaction conditions. The CTK method is applied by switching from a H2 equilibrated catalyst surface to reactive H2/CO conditions. This process is monitored as a function of time until the steady state of the reaction is reached. Conversely, once the steady state is reached, a back-transient can be initiated by switching back to H2. Surface coverages can be calculated based on surface atom counting. The time-dependent product formation along with surface coverages allow mechanistic insight into the CO hydrogenation to be gleaned.