Promotional effect of CO pretreatment on CuO/CeO2 catalyst for catalytic reduction of NO by CO

The CuO/CeO2 catalysts were investigated by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD), laser Raman spectroscopy (LRS), X-ray photoelectronic spectroscopy (XPS), temperature-programmed reduction (TPR), in situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and NO+CO reaction. The results revealed that the low temperature (<150 °C) catalytic performances were enhanced for CO pretreated samples. During CO pretreatment, the surface Cu+/Cu0 and oxygen vacancies on ceria surface were present. The low valence copper species activated the adsorbed CO and surface oxygen vacancies facilitated the NO dissociation. These effects in turn led to higher activities of CuO/CeO2 for NO reduction. The current study provided helpful understandings of active sites and reaction mechanism in NO+CO reaction.