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Abstract

The direct partial oxidation of methane to methanol is a great scientific and economical objective to expand the application of the abundant fuel gas as a major resource for one‐step production of value‐added chemicals. Despite substantial efforts to commercialize this synthetic route, to date, no heterogeneous catalyst can selectively oxidize methane into methanol by O₂ with an economically acceptable conversion. Cu‐exchanged zeolites have been recently highlighted as one of the most promising bioinspired catalysts toward the direct production of methanol from methane under mild conditions. In this work, we prepared Cu‐based catalysts using SBA‐15 as an alternative support and investigated their activity for this conversion. Our results demonstrate that highly dispersed CuO species on SBA‐15 are able to react with methane and subsequently produce methanol with high selectivity (> 84%) via water‐assisted extraction. Furthermore, it is confirmed that the main intermediate formed after interaction of the catalyst with methane is a methoxy species, which can be further converted to methanol or dimethyl ether (DME) upon extraction with water or methanol, respectively.