Sarah Rogers - Oxidation of Hydrocarbons in Supercritical Media

PhD, October 2002 - March 2006; Postdoc Dec 2005 - August 2006

Sarah recently left the research group to begin a postdoctoral position at the recently built Diamond facility in Oxfordshire.

After completing her PhD on reactions in microphase separating surfactant systems in this lab, Sarah has stayed on to work as a Post-Doc. Her new research looks the oxidation of hydrocarbons in supercritical media. This is a joint project with the University  of Cardiff.

The goal of this research is to investigate the use of supercritical media for oxidation reactions, since the inherent diffusion limitation of operating in three phase media is readily overcome.

The following steps will be taken to attempt to achieve this goal:

• to develop novel reversed micelle-forming surfactants, which will be employed for the growth and stabilisation of nano-particle catalysts in supercritical CO₂ and hydrocarbons;
• to investigate the oxidation of hydrocarbons in supercritical CO₂ using gold catalysts;
• to investigate the use of surfactant stabilised colloidal gold as catalysts for the oxidation of hydrocarbons in supercritical hydrocarbons;
• to investigate the use of surfactant stabilised colloidal gold as catalysts for the oxidation of hydrocarbons in supercritical CO₂.

Gold nanoparticles will be used as it has been discovered that gold is an effective heterogeneous catalyst, particularly for oxidation,¹ when finely divided as nanocrystals and supported on oxides or carbon.

1)       G.C. Bond, D.T. Thompson, Catal. Rev., 41 (1999) 319.