Developing a Novel Magnetic Resonance Method to Characterise Molecular Dynamics inside Catalysts

Catalysis lies at the heart of the chemical industry with 80% of industrial chemical production requiring catalytic technology within their manufacturing process. It is estimated that catalysis contributes around $10 trillion to the global economy, including £50 billion p.a. to the UK alone. As a result there is strong motivation to make catalytic processes more energy efficient, and more selective to the required product thereby reducing production of by-products or waste streams. Our research group has already developed a range of techniques, many based on magnetic resonance methods, to probe molecular adsorption and diffusion in porous catalysts. This CASE studentship is focussed on extending the use of fast-field cycling NMR (a multi-frequency NMR technique) to characterise molecular dynamics and molecule-surface interactions inside catalysts and to develop its use alongside techniques we have already established in the group. Understanding how reactants, intermediates and product molecules interact with each other inside the pores of a catalyst as well as with the pore surface and the catalytically active site is central to advances in catalyst design. Once the method is sufficiently developed, it will be applied to a range of catalytic materials to explore the extent to which the new insights obtained may be used to improve process performance.