Selective catalytic reduction of NO at low temperature using a (ethanol plus ammonia) mixture over a Ag/Al2O3 + WO3 /Cex-ZryO2 dual-bed catalytic system: Reactivity insight of WO3/Cex-ZryO2

The Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) is one of the most efficient process for NOx removal from Diesel exhaust gas. However, the urea/NH3-SCR process implemented in recent vehicles still suffers from a poor activity in the low temperature range (T < 250 degrees C). One main reason is its dependency against the NO2/NOx ratio, limiting the expected fast-SCR reaction in this temperature range. Recently, we shown that the addition of ethanol to ammonia led to a significant increase of the activity of a Ag/Al2O3 catalyst in this low temperature range. Moreover, in a dual-bed configuration (Ag/Al2O3 + WO3/Ce-x-ZryO2), a remarkable improvement was achieved at low temperature using only NO as NOx. The present work aims to highlight the DeNO(x) chemistry encountered over the WO3/Ce-x-ZryO2 catalyst in a bifunctional (EtOH + NH3) mixture. In addition to the fact that this process takes advantage of the low temperature NO2 formation over the upstream Ag/Al2O3 catalyst, this work also puts in evidenced unexpected interactions between NO2 and CH3CHO (resulting from ethanol oxidation over Ag/Al2O3) thus leading to NO emission.