Search Results (3)

This review aims to give a general overview of the recent use of tungsten-based catalysts for wide environmental applications, with first some useful background information about tungsten oxides. Tungsten oxide materials exhibit suitable behaviors for surface reactions and catalysis such as acidic properties (mainly Brønsted sites), redox and adsorption properties (due to the presence of oxygen vacancies) and a photostimulation response under visible light (2.6–2.8 eV bandgap). Depending on the operating condition of the catalytic process, each of these behaviors is tunable by controlling structure and morphology (e.g., nanoplates, nanosheets, nanorods, nanowires, nanomesh, microflowers, hollow nanospheres) and/or interactions with other compounds such as conductors (carbon), semiconductors or other oxides (e.g., TiO₂) and precious metals. WO_x particles can be also dispersed on high specific surface area supports. Based on these behaviors, WO₃-based catalysts were developed for numerous environmental applications. This review is divided into five main parts: structure of tungsten-based catalysts, acidity of supported tungsten oxide catalysts, WO₃ catalysts for DeNO_x applications, total oxidation of volatile organic compounds in gas phase and gas sensors and pollutant remediation in liquid phase (photocatalysis). Full article

The effect of the sodium addition mode was investigated on model Cu/FER selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalysts with two copper loadings (2.8 wt. % and 6.1 wt. %) in order to compare samples with or without over-exchanged copper. Na was added by wet-impregnation using two solvents: water or ethanol. Catalysts were evaluated in Standard and Fast-SCR conditions, as well as in NO and NH₃ oxidation. They were characterized by H₂-TPR, NO and NH₃ adsorption monitored by FT-IR. As expected, whatever the copper loading, ammonia adsorption capacity was decreased by Na additions. Interestingly, characterizations also showed that Na impregnation in water favors the migration of the Cu-exchanged species, leading to the formation of CuO extra-framework compounds. Consequently, for both copper loadings, Na impregnation in water led to a stronger catalyst deactivation than impregnation in ethanol. Finally, the NO_x conversion at low temperature (250 °C) appeared mainly affected by the loss in NH₃ adsorption capacity whereas the deNO_x deactivation at high temperature (500 °C) was rather governed by the decrease in the exchanged copper ratio, which also induced a partial inhibition of NO and NH₃ oxidation behaviors. Full article

The selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NO_x by NH₃ has been extensively studied in the literature, mainly because of its high potential to remediate the pollution of diesel exhaust gases. The implementation of the NH₃-SCR process into passenger cars requires the use of an ammonia precursor, provided by a urea aqueous solution in the conventional process. Although the thermal decomposition and hydrolysis mechanisms of urea are well documented in the literature, the influence of the direct use of urea on the NO_x reduction over SCR catalysts may be problematic. With the aim to evaluate prototype powdered catalysts, a specific synthetic gas bench adjusted to powdered material was developed, allowing the use of NH₃ or urea as reductant for direct comparison. The design of the experimental setup allows vaporization of liquid urea at 200 °C under 10 bar using an HPLC pump and a micro injector of 50 μm diameter. This work presents the experimental setup of the catalytic test and some remarkable catalytic results towards further development of new catalytic formulations specifically dedicated to urea-SCR. Indeed, a possible divergence in terms of DeNO_x efficiency is evidenced depending on the nature of the reductant, NH₃ or urea solution. Particularly, the evaluated catalyst may not allow an optimal NO_x conversion because of a lack in ammonia availability when the urea residence time is shortened. This is attributed to insufficient activity of isocyanic acid (HNCO) hydrolysis, which can be improved by addition upstream of an active solid for the hydrolysis reaction such as ZrO₂. Thus, this µ-scale synthetic gas bench adjusted to powdered materials enables the specific behaviour of urea use for NO_x reduction to be demonstrated. Full article