High
temperature calcined spherical alumina material with macroporous
structure is widely used in the typical strong exothermic industrial
catalytic process due to its good heat transfer ability. Aiming at
the problem that its low surface area limits the dispersion of active
metals, an in situ growth method is applied to fabricate an alumina
array on spherical alumina, while maintaining the heat transfer advantages.
Taking the as-obtained modified alumina as support, a highly dispersed
PdAg catalyst for selective hydrogenation of acetylene is synthesized,
which exhibits a remarkable enhanced intrinsic activity. Moreover,
when the conversion of acetylene reaches 90%, the selectivity toward
ethylene still remains 89%. Preferred selectivity is assigned to more
isolated Pd sites as well as high electronic density, which facilitates
the desorption of the resulting ethylene. More importantly, the array
modified catalyst exhibits good structural stability and resistance
to carbon deposition. From one aspect, the decrease of the heat production
rate over a single active site is conducive to reducing the reaction
heat accumulation, thereby avoiding the formation of hot spots over
the catalyst, which is a necessary condition for the endothermic reaction
of carbon deposition. From another point of view, both the new generated
outer opening pore structure and the original macroporous structure
of the molded alumina are beneficial for the heat transfer.