Study on the Influence of Cerium Addition to the Catalytic Performance of Copper–Manganese Catalysts

Abstract In this study, Cu–Mn–Ce ternary catalysts were prepared using the co‐precipitation method by adding Ce to Cu–Mn catalysts, and the catalytic oxidation performance of toluene was comparatively investigated between Cu–Mn and Cu–Mn–Ce catalysts. The fresh or used catalysts were characterized by BET, XRD, SEM, XPS, and Raman spectroscopy to explore the relationship between catalyst structure and performance. XRD results indicated that a significant amount of CeO 2 crystals were formed within the Cu–Mn–Ce catalyst. According to XPS and Raman results, Ce in the Cu–Mn–Ce catalyst existed predominantly as Ce 3+ and Ce 4+ , with the latter contributing to the generation of oxygen vacancies, enabling the catalyst to maintain excellent catalytic activity under high toluene concentrations. Additionally, the effects of different element molar ratios, toluene concentrations, space velocity, and oxygen contents on catalyst performance were investigated. The Cu 2 Mn 1 Ce 2 catalyst exhibited the best performance. When the toluene inlet concentration was 39330.0 mg/m 3 , the degradation rate of the Cu 2 Mn 1 Ce 2 catalyst reached 97.0%, which is 31.7% higher than that of the Cu 2 Mn 1 catalyst. The reason for the easy deactivation of the Cu 2 Mn 1 catalyst was attributed to the destruction of the active phase. The toluene degradation mechanism was finally analyzed using GC‐MS.