Formaldehyde oxidation at room temperature over layered MnO2

In this study, the catalytic oxidation of formaldehyde present in ambient air at room temperature over MnO2 solids prepared by a simple redox reaction was investigated. For HCHO initial concentrations in the 0.49–4.02 mg/m3 range, the obtained MnO2-MS catalyst provided 100% conversion of HCHO at 25 °C in ~1 h which was kept constant for additional 10 h time-on-stream. The characterization of MnO2-MS showed that the large concentration of manganese vacancies (defect sites) and active oxygen species on the surface of the layered MnO2 play a key role for the oxidation of HCHO performance of the catalyst.