Efficiency of Phosphotungstic Acid Modified Mn-Based Catalysts to Promote Activity and N2 Formation for Selective Catalytic Reduction of NO with Ammonia

Abstract In this work, the modified Mn-based NH3-SCR (NH3 low-temperature selective catalytic reduction) catalysts with excellent NO conversion and N2 selectivity be designed. N2 yield was hardly more than 75 % over MnOx/TiO2 for NH3-SCR reaction, whereas the NH3-SCR performance has been significantly improved by using 50 wt.% HPW (H3PW12O40)-MnOx/TiO2. 100 % NO conversion and more than 95 % N2 yield was obtained in wide operating temperature window (150–400°C), suggesting that the addition of HPW could effectively improve the NO reduction conversion. After that, the catalysts were further characterized by XRD, H2-TPR, XPS and in situ DRIFT. DRIFT analysis implied that the introduction of HPW significantly improve the capacity of NH4 + species adsorbed on Brønsted acid sites accompanied with inhibiting the formation and consumption of nitrite species. It proved that the non-selective catalytic reduction reaction over HPW-MnOx/TiO2 catalysts are restrained. HPW could accelerate the formation and consumption of NH4 + species adsorbed on Brønsted acid sites with deactivation of nitrate species. In addition, NH3(ad) could be hardly oxidized to NH species and then reacted with nitrate species (L-H mechanism) and gaseous NO (E-R mechanism). More importantly, the oxidation of NH3 was also suppressed, which plays a dominate role to form N2O above 300°C. Besides, the deactivation of potassium poisoning on the SCR activity significantly weakened for modified samples compared to parent catalyst.