Reaction kinetics for the catalytic oxidation of sulfur dioxide with microscale and nanoscale iron oxides

This paper contains a study of the oxidation of sulfur dioxide using microscale and nanoscale iron oxide as catalysts. A comparison of the catalytic performance of microscale and nanoscale iron oxides showed that nanoscale iron oxide generally is more effective than microscale iron oxide in regard to catalyzing the oxidation of sulfur dioxide. The reaction orders, with respect to the reactants sulfur dioxide and oxygen, were 1 and 0.24, and 1 and 0.30 when microscale and nanoscale iron oxides, respectively, were used as catalysts. Furthermore, the activation energy of catalytic oxidation of sulfur dioxide with microscale iron oxide is 88.9% higher than that with nanoscale iron oxide.