Recently, the team combined a multi-scale reaction-diffusion model with super-resolution structural illumination imaging to achieve imaging of the reaction and diffusion processes within the SAPO-34 molecular sieve crystal for methanol to olefin industrial grade production. This allows for direct acquisition of the spatiotemporal distribution and evolution of reactants and product molecules, carbon species, and acidic sites during the reaction. Research has found that in the process of methanol to olefins, the crystal size of molecular sieves can change the initial spatial positioning of active intermediates (aromatic hydrocarbon pool species), directly determining the accessibility and utilization of acidic sites and active intermediates between guest molecules and catalysts, thereby significantly affecting the macroscopic reaction performance of methanol to olefins. This method has also been further used to quantitatively describe the rapid deactivation process of molecular sieve catalysts in the methanol to olefin process. This study combines the mesoscale model with spatiotemporal resolution spectroscopy technology, which not only promotes the understanding of the reaction diffusion process of molecular sieve catalysts in methanol to olefins, but also has important significance for the design of molecular sieve catalysts and the optimization of methanol to olefins process. At the same time, it provides new ideas for studying the spatiotemporal evolution behavior of guest molecules in molecular sieve crystals in heterogeneous catalytic reactions.

The relevant research results were published in Nat. Comm. The above research work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Major Research Program Integration Project and the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics Innovation Research Fund Project.