135 137 PMR Jul09

DOI: 10.
1595/147106709X465479
Carbons and Carbon Supported Catalysts

in Hydroprocessing
BY EDWARD FURIMSKY (IMAF Group, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, U.K., 2008, 176 pages,
ISBN 978-0-85404-143-5, 95.00
Reviewed by Martyn V. Twigg

Johnson Matthey PLC, Orchard Road, Royston, Hertfordshire SG8 5HE, U.K.; E-mail: twiggm@matthey.com
Elemental carbon is known in a variety of

forms that range from diamond gemstones
through C60 fullerene and graphite to carbon
nanotubes, but to those working with catalysts the
most familiar are probably high surface area forms
known as activated charcoals. The very high
surface areas of porous charcoals made from wood
and peat, as well as those derived from more exotic materials such as coconut husks, are well suited
as catalyst supports and each have specific
desirable properties. They are used widely to
prepare platinum group metal (pgm) catalysts (1)
that typically contain only a few per cent of pgm
yet have very high activities at low temperatures.
This is because, not only do pgms have high intrinsic catalytic activity, but they can also be very finely
dispersed over activated charcoals, as extremely
small crystallites that provide high surface areas of
the active metal. These catalysts, and especially
those containing palladium, have been used extensively for many years in organic preparative
chemistry (2), and today they have important roles
in hydrogenation and hydrogenolysis reactions.
They even find application in some carboncarbon
bond forming processes (3) and potentially also in
direct carbonylation reactions (4). In spite of their
importance in pgm-based catalysts, carbon supports are less well known in base metal catalysts.
One reason for this is that, over time, there can be
a tendency for metals like cobalt, iron or nickel to
form carbides, especially at higher temperatures,
and this leads to a loss of catalytic activity.
The present small book, as its title suggests, is
about the catalytic activity of carbons (and especially activated charcoals) and metal compounds
supported on carbons, with a focus on catalytic
hydroprocessing reactions of crude oils. These
Platinum Metals Rev., 2009, 53, (3), 135137
reactions include hydrogenation, hydrocracking,

hydrodesulfurisation, hydrodenitrogenation, and
hydrodemetallation processes. Huge quantities of
hydroprocessing catalysts are employed in refineries, and the most common ones are sulfided
cobalt/molybdenum and nickel/molybdenum
formulations, and to a much lesser extent their
tungsten analogues, supported on aluminas with
various promoters. Reflecting the importance of
very low sulfur hydrocarbon fuels, there is a vast
literature on hydroprocessing catalysts, and especially on the nature of the active sulfide phases
present in the operating catalysts (5, 6).
Carbon-Supported Hydroprocessing
Catalysts
After a short general introductory chapter
outlining the basic structures of graphite, carbon
black, diamond, activated carbons, C60 fullerene
and carbon nanotubes, there is another short chapter entitled Industrial Carbons that provides
details of the physical properties of each of the carbon forms. The next chapter briefly discusses the
structure and composition of traditional hydroprocessing catalysts and the cobalt/molybdenum
phases involved in hydrodesulfurisation, and
contrasts this with what is known about their
carbon-supported counterparts. Here, the
metalcarbon interactions are likely to be weakened by the presence of metalsulfur bonds, and
while this might be thought to inhibit deactivation
via carbide formation, it could well open up other
deactivation paths such as loss of surface area. The
influence of physical properties like support pore
size is also discussed.
The fourth chapter is concerned with the
ability of carbons to absorb, activate and transfer
135
active hydrogen via CH bonds at high temperatures. At the lower temperatures normally used for
carbon-supported pgm catalysts, these reactions
must be much less important than the activation of
hydrogen by the supported pgms. Indeed in the
presence of platinum, palladium or rhodium, dissociative hydrogen chemisorption takes place on
the metal, followed by spillover onto the carbon
surface to form weakly bonded mobile H atoms.
Most of the cited examples are systems based on
cobalt/molybdenum formulations, although other
interesting catalysts are referred to.
The following chapter, entitled Catalytic
Activity of Carbons, begins with a comparison of
coking tendencies of cobalt/molybdenum species
supported on alumina and supported on activated
charcoal. In use, activated charcoal-based catalysts
have a very much smaller rate of coke formation
from anthracene than do alumina-based catalysts,
and this difference is attributed to the relative acidity of the supports the alumina being acidic while
the carbon is said to be neutral. However, it is clear
that such benefits in reactions with real feeds are
not always apparent, and this may at least in part be
because the acid/base behaviour of activated charcoals can vary enormously depending on their
origin and the treatments they have undergone.
The sixth chapter, Carbon Supported
Catalysts, is concerned with the preparation of
carbon supported hydroprocessing catalysts, and it
covers most of the conventional preparative
methods. Techniques used to characterise these
carbon-supported catalysts are also discussed, and
they include a range of spectroscopic and adsorption/desorption methods as well as catalytic
activity measurements. The results presented highlight that this is a complicated area of catalysis,
with multiple parameters influencing the catalysts
activity in practice. The next chapter, Kinetics and
Mechanism of Hydroprocessing Reactions, deals
with hydrogenation of aromatics, hydrodesulfurisation, hydrodenitrogenation, hydrodeoxygenation
and hydrodemetallation reactions, and reinforces
the conclusion that this is a complex area of catalysis. Several tables of rate constants with various
feeds over conventional and carbon-supported
catalysts are provided; however, there is little
Platinum Metals Rev., 2009, 53, (3)
discussion about the intimate mechanisms of these

reactions. The eighth chapter, Catalyst
Deactivation, reminds the reader that coking
reactions are an important deactivation process for
conventional hydroprocessing catalysts, and that
their carbon-supported counterparts can be less
prone to this deactivation mode.
The penultimate chapter on Patent Literature
is surprisingly brief, being only one and a half
pages long and with fewer than ten patents cited
this, it is said, reflects the rather limited patent
literature on carbon-supported hydroprocessing
catalysts. However, there are in fact many more
related published patents than those listed, and it is
not clear what criteria were applied to produce this
short list. The final two-page chapter provides
some Conclusions, including the proposal that
the activity of carbon-supported catalysts is based
on their ability to adsorb and activate hydrogen. In
this regard, carbon blacks are said to be more able
to activate hydrogen than activated charcoals,
which in turn are more active than graphite. And,
of course, this is much enhanced by the presence
of metal species, especially palladium and
platinum.
Commercial Applications
This book contains some thought provoking
information, and it will certainly be of interest to
those involved with carbon-based catalysts. In
some instances, there appear to be benefits from
using carbon-supported hydroprocessing catalysts,
although the fundamental reasons for this are not
always delineated, nor are guide rules provided.
Commercially activated charcoals often have various promoters incorporated on their surfaces, and
may have undergone an oxidative pre-treatment
that gives a high dispersion of the active species
when it is applied. In the context of this book it is
unclear what effects these treatments have on, for
example, carbon-supported sulfided cobalt/
molybdenum hydroprocessing catalysts.
It is, however, clear that carbon supports have
attracted much more attention in areas other than
hydroprocessing reactions, and with the exception
of promoted carbon-supported ruthenium catalyst
for ammonia synthesis (7), the most successful
136
carbon-supported catalysts are used at low temperatures. The hydroprocessing catalysts discussed in
this book, on the other hand, operate at relatively
high temperatures. Under these hydrogenating
conditions, a major practical problem could be
gasification of the support itself to give methane or
other hydrocarbon species, and this should not be
overlooked when considering carbon-supported
catalysts for hydrogenation applications involving
high hydrogen partial pressures and high temperatures. It is claimed in this book that carbon
gasification is slow under typical hydrodesulfurisation conditions, although over several months
operation some irreversible structural changes may
take place. However, little information about this is
available. Potential practical complications such as
this are not explored in any detail, although before
these carbon-supported hydroprocessing catalysts
are considered for industrial applications it is paramount that they be better understood, though
perhaps not to the level of detail that pgms on carbons are understood from their widespread use
and characterisation over many years.
References
1
2
3
4
A. J. Bird, Activated Carbon Supports, in Catalyst

Supports and Supported Catalysts: Theoretical and
Applied Concepts, ed. A. B. Stiles, ButterworthHeinemann, Stoneham, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 1987,
pp. 107137
See for example: J. C. Chaston and E. J. Sercombe,
Platinum Metals Rev., 1961, 5, (4), 122
See for example: L. S. Liebeskind and E. Pea-Cabrera,
Org. Synth., Collect. Vol., 2004, 10, 9
H. M. Colquhoun, D. J. Thompson and M. V. Twigg,
Carbonylation: Direct Synthesis of Carbonyl
Compounds, Plenum Publishing Corp, New York,
U.S.A., 1991
H. Topse, B. S. Clausen and F. E. Massoth,
Hydrotreating Catalysis, eds. J. R. Anderson and M.
Boudart, Catalysis Science and Technology, Volume
11, Springer Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 1996
J. Scherzer and A. J. Gruia, Hydrocracking Science
and Technology, Marcel Dekker, New York, U.S.A.,
1996
S. R. Tennison, Alternative Noniron Catalysts, in
Catalytic Ammonia Synthesis: Fundamentals and
Practice, ed. J. R. Jennings, Fundamental and Applied
Catalysis Series, Plenum Press, New York, U.S.A.,
1991, pp. 303364
The Reviewer
Martyn Twigg is the Chief Scientist of Johnson
Matthey PLC and was previously Technical
Director for the Environmental Catalysts and
Technologies Division. Following work at the
University of Toronto, Canada, and a fellowship at
the University of Cambridge, U.K., he joined ICI
where he aided the development and production of
heterogeneous catalysts used in the production of
hydrogen, ammonia and methanol. Martyn has
authored or co-authored many research papers,
written numerous chapters in encyclopedic works, and edited and contributed
to several books. He edits a book series on fundamental and applied catalysis.
Platinum Metals Rev., 2009, 53, (3)
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DOI: 10.

Carbons and Carbon Supported Catalysts

Reviewed by Martyn V. Twigg

Elemental carbon is known in a variety of

Platinum Metals Rev., 2009, 53, (3), 135137

reactions include hydrogenation, hydrocracking,

Platinum Metals Rev., 2009, 53, (3)

discussion about the intimate mechanisms of these

A. J. Bird, Activated Carbon Supports, in Catalyst

Platinum Metals Rev., 2009, 53, (3)

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