Photothermal catalytic oxidation of toluene with enhanced efficiency over constructed CuMn2O4/Mn2O3 heterojunction catalyst

Photothermal catalyst oxidation of VOCs is a hot issue in the air purifier field due to the reducing of secondary energy consumption. Herein, we reported a photothermal catalyst CuMn2O4/Mn2O3 with heterojunction for catalytic oxidizing toluene with high efficiency through sol–gel method followed different calcination temperature. Under the irradiation of 700 mW/cm2 Xe lamp simulated sun light, the CuMn2O4/Mn2O3 catalyst exhibited excellent full spectrum light absorption capacity, photo-thermal conversion ability and toluene conversion performance with a 90% toluene conversion (T = 233 °C, WHSV = 30,000 mL/g·h), together with a good catalytic stability. The excellent performance can be attributed to the synergistic effect of abundant oxygen vacancies, Mn3+ active sites and heterojunctions between CuMn2O4 and Mn2O3 due to the XPS, H2-TPR, UPS characterizations.