Catalysis by Supported Metals

This chapter describes the interaction between metal and support, which may complicate the interpretation of data obtained with supported metals, the critical problem of determining the surface area of the metal, and illustrates the use of supported metals for the elucidation of the problem of catalyst specificity. Work on the series of platinum catalysts suggests that many reactions of hydrogenation, dehydrogenation, and hydrogenolysis are structure-insensitive. If, these same catalysts are now used in reactions involving oxygen—decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, oxidation of methanol and ethanol, oxidation of acetaldehyde—the picture is substantially altered: while specific rates are again almost the same for highly dispersed samples with percentages of dispersion between 80 and 100%, these specific rates change by at least one order of magnitude on samples with a smaller dispersion (50%) and on platinum black.