Abstract
Last year, nearly 1 billion waste tires were disposed of globally, a number that continues to grow with the deployment of more automobiles. Recycling this hazardous waste to produce useful products is paramount towards sustainability that has a direct impact on society. In an effort to alleviate the impact of this waste, we have shown that scrap tire crumb rubber can be turned into value-added sulfonated carbon catalysts that can be used for a number of applications. Here, we analyze the sulfonated carbon catalysts with several techniques in order to elucidate the structural properties as well as the impact of pre- and post-sulfonation on the surface functionalities. Most notably, we applied neutron vibrational spectroscopy in order to better understand the surface chemistry of carbon material and resolve the role of protons in tire-derived carbon. Our results suggest that tuning the surface chemistry and the content of sulfur and hydrogen will promote Lewis-acid catalysis, which allows for important heterogeneous reactions such as esterification.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 387-393 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Catalysis Today |
| Volume | 358 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2020 |
Funding
The neutron characterization (M.P.P) of carbon materials was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. A portion of this research was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences and at the VISION beamline of the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) user facilities were sponsored by the Division of Scientific User Facilities, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. Z.D.H. gratefully acknowledges a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (DGE-1650044), and S.F.E. gratefully acknowledges a Graduate Research Fellowship from the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Graduate Education. We would like to thank Dr. Rich Lee of RJ Lee Group for providing tire-derived carbon for this research. Notice: This manuscript was coauthored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). The neutron characterization (M.P.P) of carbon materials was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. A portion of this research was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences and at the VISION beamline of the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) user facilities were sponsored by the Division of Scientific User Facilities, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. Z.D.H. gratefully acknowledges a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (DGE-1650044), and S.F.E. gratefully acknowledges a Graduate Research Fellowship from the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Graduate Education. We would like to thank Dr. Rich Lee of RJ Lee Group for providing tire-derived carbon for this research. Notice: This manuscript was coauthored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). Appendix A
Keywords
- Carbon
- Esterification reaction
- Neutron vibrational spectroscopy
- Recycled tires
- Solid acid catalyst
