| Nano-scaled materials, in comparison to their classical, bulk-phase counterparts offer a significant enhancement of desirable properties for combustion such as reactivity, surface area, dispersion ability. An example of such an enhancement, room temperature ignition and self-sustained combustion of methanol on platinum nanoparticles is investigated in the presented text. Oxidation of reactants occurs heterogeneously on the surface of platinum particles, which offers lower reaction temperatures, much wider range of acceptable equivalence ratios, and room-temperature ignition. Experiments were conducted on a specifically built flow reactor, where measurements of temperatures and species concentrations were performed during oxidation of methanol/air mixtures at lean equivalence ratios. The study quantifies effect of reactants flowrate on catalyst activity, evaluates composition of oxidation products, and assesses catalytic conversion efficiency. With a thorough microscope analysis of the catalyst, the work offers a contribution to understanding of how the scale of materials makes a significant difference in performance once a micro-level scale is surpassed. |
