(5f) Controlled Temperature Dynamics in a Catalytic Microreactor

Engineers and scientists have spent decades manipulating and understanding catalysts and have generally come to the conclusion that kinetic rate optimization is restricted by the thermodynamics of the surface-species interactions. This limit is established by Sabatier’s rule, dictated by the scaling relations, and visualized in the form of a so-called volcano plot. Although for years this limitation was taken at face value and deemed insurmountable, recent studies have begun finding creative ways to better optimize or even overcome this thermodynamic limitation. Reaction dynamics, or operating a reactor in a controlled, oscillatory fashion, is one such way researchers have begun to overcome these limitations. In this work we have developed a platinum wire microreactor system to study CO oxidation under dynamic conditions. Our reactor is capable of oscillating reaction temperatures at frequencies up to 10Hz by way of rapid Joule heating. Not only frequency, but we performed a parametric sweep across a range of kinetically relevant temperature amplitudes to explore the effects of dynamic systems on reaction kinetics.