Abstract
Phosphorous heteroatoms were added in order to tune the selectivity and investigate the roles of different oxygen species in graphitic mesoporous carbons for the oxidative dehydrogenation reaction of isobutane to isobutene. Small changes in the apparent isobutane activation energy are consistent with the notion that the phosphorous groups do not change the nature of the active sites but they interfere with the availability of the sites. Our results show that the improvement on selectivity is not proportional to the amount of phosphorous added. Small phosphorous content improved the selectivity by suppressing the combustion of isobutane. However, a higher amount of phosphorous groups lead to coverage of selective quinone sites and/or creation of active sites favorable to total oxidation.
