World fuel consumption is shifting more and more to diesel
at the expense of gasoline. An article published in Nature Chemistry by a research team at Stockholm
University and the Polytechnic
University of Valencia in Spain
presents a new porous material that evinces unique properties for converting
gasoline directly into diesel. The material has a complex atomic structure that
could only be determined with the aid of transmission electron microscopy.
The aluminosilicate, which has been named ITQ-39, belongs to
the zeolite class and has a porous structure that enables sufficiently small
molecules to pass through it. On their way through, they can react with other
molecules and create a desired product. The new material has channels of
varying size and shape in different directions. These variously shaped channels
entail that a molecule that is transported inside the material can be limited in
different ways, depending on the direction it travels.
ITQ-39 is the most complex zeolite material ever discovered.
Its structure was determined by a research team at Stockholm University
headed by Professor Xiaodong Zou, with the help of electron crystallography. On
an electron microscope, extremely small crystals can be studied, in this case
down to a couple of nanometers. What makes ITQ-39 such a complicated material
is that, unlike most other crystalline material, it is not perfectly ordered.
The material studied has a type of chaotic order. To be able to understand the
material in the smallest detail requires both a model of how the atoms are
arranged in the minimal ordered areas and a model of how these domains are then
linked together into crystals. This disorder can be studied with the aid of
high-resolution images taken with an electron microscope that can then serve as
a basis for creating a model of the atomic structure of the material. This is
what researchers Tom Willhammar, Junliang Sun, Wan Wei, Peter Oleynikov,
Daliang Zhang, and Xiaodong Zou at Stockholm
University present in Nature
Chemistry.
The material, which was produced by a research team headed
by Professor Avelino Corma in the Polytechnic University of Valencia, has
proven to be an excellent catalytic converter for turning gasoline into diesel.
This is a process that has become ever more important with the marked growth in
the demand for diesel in recent years.
SOURCE – Swedish Research Council
