Powdered activated carbons are widely used as liquid phase catalyst supports in batch stirred reactors.  The small size of ~30microns is required to achieve acceptable mass transfer properties.  However the small size tends lead to problems in the recovery of the catalyst from the product.  They also have poor attrintion resistance leading to further problems in catalyst recovery.  The carbons to be described in this paper were developed in two EU sponsored projects specifically to overcome the problems of mass transfer and mechanical stablity.

These novel carbons are produced from a phenolic resin precursor via a patented dispersion process that allows the production of bead materials with a  mean particle size between around 20 microns and 2mm diameter.  The beads have high crush strength, even at very high porosities, and very high attrition resistance. The beads also have a precisely controlled micropore structure with a mean pore size of ~1nm with surface areas that can exceed 2500m2/g allowing the production of highly dispersed metal cataysts. These carbons also have a unique surface structure that allows the surface chemistry to be varied between acidic and basic and across a wide range of different types of surface oxide compositions.  This permits a unique degree of control of the metal dispersion via different preparative routes.

The most important characteristic of these carbons is their mesopore structure which can be tailored to give mean pore sizes between 2 and 200 nm.  Studies have shown that due to this  "transport" pore structure catalyst particle sizes of of several hundred microns can now be used with no loss in performance.  This allows much easier catalyst recovery whilst the improved mechanical properties prevent losses due to attrition.  The use of these larger beads can also now allow the use of novel reactor geomtries.

The prodution, properties and catalyst performance of these novel carbon supports will be discussed.

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