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Catalytic Reduction of Nitric Oxide with Hydrogen Using Carbon-Supported d-Metal Catalysts

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Abstract

Technologies for the reduction of nitric oxide are well established and are a critical resource in reducing the emission of nitrogen oxides released during combustion. Herein, we demonstrate a more sustainable approach, utilising Earth-abundant metals supported on waste-derived carbon to facilitate this reaction. Selective catalytic reduction, whereby a reductant is used to convert NO over a catalytic bed into nitrogen, is regarded as the best available technology for NO reduction. Here, we have investigated the use of H2, which has the potential to be produced from sustainable resources, as the reductant. Three selected d-metals (copper, iron and manganese) were impregnated over palm kernel shell activated carbons via incipient wetness. The characteristics of the carbon support and the derivative catalysts were analysed to investigate structure-performance relationships. H2-SCR was performed in a fixed-bed reactor; the results showed that the supported-copper catalyst converted NO completely at temperatures of 250 °C and above. This is attributed to the high reducibility and acidity of the catalyst as demonstrated via temperature-programmed reduction, ammonia-temperature programmed desorption, Fourier-transform infra-red spectroscopy and nitric oxide adsorption–desorption experiments. It is concluded that the carbon-supported d-metal catalysts are viable for use in H2-SCR, thereby promoting a more sustainable approach to mitigating NOx emissions.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code Availability

Not applicable.

Notes

  1. Note the standard deviation for PKSFe is only significant at high temperature 300 °C. This might be due to another factor, such as catalyst dispersion, contributing to the combustion rate. This was not investigated further due to the absence of this effect in other samples.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia and University Malaysia Sarawak under the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme F02/FRGS/2022/2020]. The authors would like to acknowledge EPSRC award EP/K001329/1 for granting access to SEM-EDS. This research also used the resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. Special thanks goes to Prof. Greg Beaucage and his students (Alex McGlasson, Michael Chauby, and Kabir Rishi) at the University of Cincinnati for their assistance in WAXS analysis, and Dr Jan Ilavsky and his team, who run and operate the beamline at Argonne.

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia and University Malaysia Sarawak (Fundamental Research Grant Scheme F02/FRGS/2022/2020). The authors would like to acknowledge EPSRC award EP/K001329/1 for granting access to SEM–EDS. This research also used the resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

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  1. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Ibrahim Yakub & James McGregor

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering and Energy Sustainability, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 94300, Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia

    Ibrahim Yakub

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  1. Ibrahim Yakub
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IY: Conceptualisation, methodology, investigation, funding acquisition, writing (original draft). JMcG: Supervision, writing (reviewing and editing).

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Yakub, I., McGregor, J. Catalytic Reduction of Nitric Oxide with Hydrogen Using Carbon-Supported d-Metal Catalysts. Waste Biomass Valor 13, 1665–1680 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-021-01623-7

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