Gaseous Exchange Reaction of Deuterium between Hydrogen and Water on Hydrophobic Catalyst Supporting Platinum

Abstract

The deuterium exchange reaction between hydrogen and water in the gas phase where the fed hydrogen gas is saturated with water vapor is studied experimentally by use of the proper hydrophobic catalysts supporting platinum. It is found that the activities of those catalysts for this reaction system are very high compared with the other known ones for the systems in which gas and liquid should coexist on catalyst surfaces, and that the apparent catalytic activity becomes larger as the amount of platimun supported on a catalyst particle increases. By analyses of the data the following informations are obtained. The exchange reaction can be expressed by a first order reversible reaction kinetics. The pore diffusion in the catalyst particles has significant effect on the overall reaction mechanisms.

KEYWORDS:

• deuterium
• exchange reactions
• gas phase
• hydrogen
• water
• hydrophobic catalyst
• platinum
• reaction kinetics
• diffusion
• rate constants
• dual temperature contactor
• isotope separations