B. Kartheuser et al., TRANSIENT EXPERIMENTS ON THE SELECTIVE OXIDATION OF METHANE TO FORMALDEHYDE OVER V2O5 SIO2 STUDIED IN THE TEMPORAL-ANALYSIS-OF-PRODUCTS REACTOR/, Catalysis letters, 21(3-4), 1993, pp. 209-214
Methane oxidation to formaldehyde was studied over a vanadium oxide ca
talyst supported on silica at 630-degrees-C using the technique known
as temporal analysis of products with sequential pulsing of methane an
d oxygen. This work shows that methane interacts very weakly and oxyge
n very strongly with the catalyst surface and it is concluded that the
initial activation of methane involves an adsorbed oxygen species. Me
thyl radicals formed in the first step subsequently extract lattice ox
ygen to yield formaldehyde.