Gold solution to catalysis grand challenge

A simple, low-cost method of directly converting natural gas into useful chemicals and fuels, using the precious metal gold as a key ingredient, has been proposed by researchers at Cardiff University in collaboration with researchers at Lehigh University, USA and the National Centre for Magnetic Resonance in Wuhan, China. Whilst natural gas is one of the greenest fossil fuels, it still emits dangerous greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when burned. This has, in turn, led researchers to devise novel ways of converting methane, which accounts for 70-90% of natural gas, into more useful products, such as a fuels and chemicals, in a simple, cost-effective and low-carbon manner. In a study published today in Nature Catalysis , the team led by researchers from the Cardiff Catalysis Institute has demonstrated, for the time, the direct conversion of methane into methanol and acetic acid using a gold catalyst. Up until now, this has only been achieved through indirect routes which include multiple steps that are highly energy consuming and very costly. To achieve the creation of methanol and acetic acid the team reacted methane with oxygen in the presence of a catalyst made from gold and the zeolite ZSM-5. By examining the catalyst using high-powered electron microscopy, it was revealed that the active catalyst did not contain gold atoms or clusters, but rather gold nanoparticles - extremely small particles between 3 to 15 nanometres in size that can exhibit significantly different physical and chemical properties to their larger material counterparts.