Transient experiments on the selective oxidation of methane to formaldehyde over V₂O₅/SiO₂ studied in the temporal-analysis-of-products reactor

Methane oxidation to formaldehyde was studied over a vanadium oxide catalyst supported on silica at 630 °C using the technique known as temporal analysis of products with sequential pulsing of methane and oxygen. This work shows that methane interacts very weakly and oxygen very strongly with the catalyst surface and it is concluded that the initial activation of methane involves an adsorbed oxygen species. Methyl radicals formed in the first step subsequently extract lattice oxygen to yield formaldehyde.