Morphology effects of CeO2-ZrO2 on the catalytic performance of CuO/CeO2-ZrO2 for toluene oxidation

The morphologies of CuO/CeO2-ZrO2 catalysts were successfully controlled by simply changing the synthesis temperature using hydrothermal method. The catalytic performance for toluene oxidation was correlated with the characterization results of HRTEM, BET, XRD, H2-TPR, Raman, and O2-TPD. It was found that toluene can be oxidized into CO2 and H2O completely over the obtained catalysts, and the rod-like Cu/Ce-Zr-100 exhibits the best activity and CO2 selectivity. The rod-like CeO2-ZrO2 supports preferentially exposes (110) and (100) crystal planes of CeO2, which provides more oxygen vacancies and stronger interaction between CuO and the support in Cu/Ce-Zr-100. And the strong synergetic effect in Cu/Ce-Zr-100 promotes the dispersion of CuO on the support surface, leading to the enhancement of reducibility, oxygen vacancy concentration, adsorption and activation of gaseous oxygen, which are responsible for the good catalytic performance of toluene oxidation.