A DFT study of adsorption of intermediates in the NOx reduction pathway over BaNaY zeolites

Quantum chemical calculations were employed to develop a better understanding of the adsorption properties of BaNaY interacting with molecules relevant to deNOx catalysis. First, various basis sets and levels of theory were tested for barium-containing species and gas-phase reactions, and it was shown that the choice of the basis set for barium is critical. Density functional theory (DFT) with the B3LYP functional and SDD as the basis set was selected based on its combination of relative accuracy and speed. This level of theory was then used to calculate energies, geometries, and frequencies for acetaldehyde, acetic acid, nitromethane, and water adsorbed and in the gas phase. The predicted properties were compared to experiment where available and reasonable agreement was found. To study the effect of the zeolite framework on the adsorption properties, the size of the zeolite cluster was increased from 6 T to 36 T to 96 T using the embedded ONIOM method. Inclusion of van der Waals interactions with increasing cluster size only changed the adsorption enthalpy by a small amount for all of the adsorbates studied. It was found that the interaction between the empty 6s orbital of Ba and the lone pair orbital of the oxygen atom in the adsorbed state, revealed by natural bond orbital analysis, correlates with the adsorption enthalpy and the gas-phase charge of the oxygen atom that interacts with Ba.