Contribution to cleaner production from the point of view of VOC emissions abatement: A review

VOC (volatile organic compounds) belong to the group of undesirable air pollutants and their industrial emissions need to be treated before venting out into the atmosphere. From various advanced technologies for VOC mitigation, catalytic oxidation technology stands out as the modern and efficient method. This review presents the recent advances in the development and usage of novel catalysts for deep catalytic oxidation from the perspective of industrial feasibility. The goal is to efficiently contribute to cleaner production and provide cost-effective VOC emissions treatment by incorporating upscaled novel catalysts into VOC abatement technology. Different washcoats and active compound mixtures are developed and tested by many research groups worldwide. Extensive state-of-the-art of experimental data (129 data samples) on preferably noble metal-based catalysts and multi-metal oxides catalysts was carried out. The data are comprehensively summarized to identify generically optimal conditions to make efficient VOC abatement industrial gas catalyst with good conversions, long-term reliability, reasonable price and realistic possibilities for upscaling. Best reported T50 and T90 (temperatures corresponding to 50% and 90% conversions) for toluene were 110 °C and 144 °C, for ethanol 130 °C and 155 °C and for acetone 205 °C and 236 °C, respectively. The best performing catalysts surface areas were in the range of 16–103 m2 g−1. Furthermore, perspectives for the future development of novel VOC catalysts are provided. Particularly, the novel field of waste-to-catalysts and structured nanocatalyst development is explored. Lastly, the issues of upscaling to pilot and full-scale for each catalytic approach were discussed.