Non-thermal-plasma-activated de-NO catalysis.

The combination of non-thermal plasma (NTP) with catalyst systems as an alternative technology to remove NO emissions in the exhaust of lean-burn stationary and mobile sources is reviewed. Several factors, such as low exhaust gas temperatures (below 300°C), low selectivity to N and the presence of impurities, make current thermally activated technologies inefficient. Various hybrid plasma-catalyst systems have been examined and shown to have a synergistic effect on de-NO efficiency when compared with NTP or catalyst-alone systems.

Nanostructured Materials Prepared by Surface-Assisted Reduction: New Catalysts for Methane Oxidation.

Cerium formate hollow spheres and cerium hydroxycarbonate nanorods with residual formate groups are effective for reducing palladium(II) salts onto their surfaces. Calcination of the new materials obtained by this surface-assisted reduction method gives highly active PdO/CeO2 nanostructures with Pd well dispersed on the substrate. Temperature-programmed oxidation experiments showed that these nanomaterials are good catalysts for the low-temperature oxidation of methane, with 50% conversion temperatures (T(50%)) at ∼300 °C.

Mesoporous Mn- and La-doped cerium oxide/cobalt oxide mixed metal catalysts for methane oxidation.

New precious-metal-free mesoporous materials were investigated as catalysts for the complete oxidation of methane to carbon dioxide. Mesoporous cobalt oxide was first synthesized using KIT-6 mesoporous silica as a hard template. After removal of the silica, the cobalt oxide was itself used as a hard template to construct cerium oxide/cobalt oxide composite materials.