NO Selective Catalytic Reduction over Atom-Pair Active Sites Accelerated via In Situ NO Oxidation

Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NOx with NH3 is the most efficient technology for NOx emissions control, but the activity of catalysts decreases exponentially with the decrease in reaction temperature, hindering the application of the technology in low-temperature SCR to treat industrial stack gases. Here, we present an industrially practicable technology to significantly enhance the SCR activity at low temperatures (<250 °C). By introducing an appropriate amount of O3 into the simulated stack gas, we find that O3 can stoichiometrically oxidize NO to generate NO2, which enables NO reduction to follow the fast SCR mechanism so as to accelerate SCR at low temperatures, and, in particular, an increase in SCR rate by more than four times is observed over atom-pair V1–W1 active sites supported on TiO2(001) at 200 °C. Using operando SCR tests and in situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectra, we reveal that the introduction of O3 allows SCR to proceed along a NH4NO3-mediated Langmuir–Hinshelwood model, in which the adsorbed nitrate species speed up the re-oxidation of the catalytic sites that is the rate-limiting step of SCR, thus leading to the enhancement of activity at low temperatures. This technology could be applicable in the real stack gas conditions because O3 exclusively oxidizes NO even in the co-presence of SO2 and H2O, which provides a general strategy to improve low-temperature SCR efficacy from another perspective beyond designing catalysts.