Catalyse bifonctionnelle Application en valorisation des alcanes légers et en chimie fine

While many industrial processes in oil refining and petrochemistry take advantage from its sustainable character, bifunctional catalysis has played so far a negligible role in the light-alkane conversion and in fine chemicals synthesis. The set of study cases reported in this article show that bifunctional processes are indeed similar, involving successive steps of molecular diffusion and chemical conversion catalyzed by two types of active sites. Conversely, the peculiar characters of the reactant, intermediate and product molecules induce remarkable differences in their reactivity as well as in their diffusional behaviour along the pores. The optimal features of the bifunctional catalysts are therefore different: support with meso or macropores instead of micropores, etc.