Influence of preparation method on the performance of vanadia-niobia catalysts for the oxidative dehydrogenation of propane

The influence of various preparation methods on the performance of V-Nb-0 catalysts has been investigated. It was found that the activity and selectivity of a vanadium site depend on the nature of the neighbouring atoms. Vanadium neighbours provide activity, while niobium neighbours provide selectivity. Careful preparation of these catalysts ensures a homogeneous distribution and good mixing of the vanadium and niobium. It was also found that the vanadium becomes mobile upon reduction and this results in better distribution of vanadium in used catalysts

Processes, microstructure and properties of vanadium microalloyed steels

Vanadium as an important alloying element in steels was initially associated with the properties achieved following tempering. Interest in the microstructure was stimulated by the advent of transmission electron microscopes with a resolution of ~1nm together with selected area electron diffraction techniques. A second timely development was that of controlled rolling, particularly of plate and sheet products. The scope of this review will include the historical background on quenched and tempered vanadium steels, precipitation during isothermal aging, conventional controlled rolling and during thin slab direct charging and the development of strength and toughness in vanadium microalloyed steels. The characterisation of microstructure, in particular the methods for the analysis of the chemical composition of precipitates, has progressed since the availability of X-ray energy dispersive analysis in the 1970s, and the role played by electron energy loss spectroscopy in providing quantitative analysis of carbon and nitrogen in vanadium microalloyed steels will be presented. There are still many topics involving vanadium microalloyed steels that are controversial. These include the nucleation sequence of homogeneous precipitates of vanadium carbonitride and whether this occurs coherently, the composition of the vanadium precipitates, the nucleation mechanism for interphase precipitation, the importance of strain induced precipitation in austenite of vanadium carbonitride, the contributions of both interphase precipitation and random precipitation in ferrite to the yield strength, and the role of the process route parameters in developing properties. These topics will be considered in this paper which concentrates on hot rolled vanadium microalloyed steels placed in the context of pertinent research on other alloys

Magnetic properties of vanadium-oxide nanotubes probed by static magnetization and {51}V NMR

Measurements of the static magnetic susceptibility and of the nuclear magnetic resonance of multiwalled vanadium-oxide nanotubes are reported. In this nanoscale magnet the structural low-dimensionality and mixed valency of vanadium ions yield a complex temperature dependence of the static magnetization and the nuclear relaxation rates. Analysis of the different contributions to the magnetism allows to identify individual interlayer magnetic sites as well as strongly antiferromagnetically coupled vanadium spins (S = 1/2) in the double layers of the nanotube's wall. In particular, the data give strong indications that in the structurally well-defined vanadium-spin chains in the walls, owing to an inhomogeneous charge distribution, antiferromagnetic dimers and trimers occur. Altogether, about 30% of the vanadium ions are coupled in dimers, exhibiting a spin gap of the order of 700 K, the other ~ 30% comprise individual spins and trimers, whereas the remaining \~ 40% are nonmagnetic.Comment: revised versio

Direct Measurement of Vanadium Crossover in an Operating Vanadium Redox Flow Battery

Measurements of Vanadium diffusion coefficients for transport across cation exchange membranes using dialysis cells have been reported in the literature. However, to date direct measurement of crossover coefficients in an operating Vanadium redox flow battery (VRB) cell have not been reported. Results are reported in this paper on experiments utilizing a special VRB cell which allows measurement of Vanadium ion transport across ion exchange membranes with and without the presence of current. The cell utilizes two additional flow regions which collect Vanadium ions which diffuse from the positive and negative half cells. The effects of the magnitude and direction of electrical current on transport can be measured directly with this cell. We observe that transport is greatly enhanced when the direction of the hydrogen ion flux is in the same direction as the density gradient driven vanadium flux and suppressed when the hydrogen ion flux is in the opposite direction. The cell has been used to of investigate the effects on transport of current densities up to 900 mA/cm(2).US Department of Energy ARPA-E program DE-AR00000149Materials Science and Engineerin

Influence of phosphorus and potassium impurities on the properties of vanadium oxide supported on TiO2

The catalytic properties of vanadium oxide catalysts supported on TiO2 from Tioxide were strongly affected by phosphorus and potassium, present as impurities in the TiO2 support. The effects observed were stronaly dependent on the type of hydrocarbon oxidised. In the oxidation of toluene to benzoic acid the impurities had a large negative influence on the activity and maximum yield. For the oxidation of o-xylene to ohthalic anhydride this negative effect was only observed at relat- ively low vanadium contents. At higher contents (above monolayer coverage) improved catalytic properties were obtained for catalysts supported on the contaminated TiO2 support. When the phosphorus and potassium impurities were both largely removed by extraction with water optimum catalytic behaviour was achieved at much lower vanadium contents in both oxidation reactions. The effect of each of the two impurities separately was also investigated using vanadium oxide catalysts deliberately contaminated with various amounts of either phosphorus or potassium. From the results of the catalytic oxidation experiments it was concluded that the addition of phosphorus resulted in an increase of the surface acidity of vanadium oxide/TiO2 catalysts. The effect of potassium was much larger and was attributed to an alternation of the nature of the reactive sites, possibly because of the formation of amorphous bronzes

Grain boundary ferromagnetism in vanadium-doped In2_2O3_3 thin films

Room temperature ferromagnetism was observed in In$_2$O$_3 thin films doped with 5 at.temperatures ranging from 300 to 600$\,^{\circ}{\rm C}$. X-ray absorption fine structure measurement indicated that vanadium was substitutionally dissolved in the In$_2$O$_3$ host lattice, thus excluding the existence of secondary phases of vanadium compounds. Magnetic measurements based on SQUID magnetometry and magnetic circular dichroism confirm that the magnetism is at grain boundaries and also in the grains. The overall magnetization originates from the competing effects between grains and grain boundaries.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, accepted by Europhysics Letter