Catalytic performance of Ag/Fe2O3 for the low temperature oxidation of carbon monoxide

In this paper, the effect of impregnated Ag nanoparticles into Fe2O3 support in catalytic low temperature CO oxidation was investigated. The nanocatalysts were prepared with a conventional impregnation method. The prepared samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), N-2 adsorption/desorption, Temperature programmed reduction (TPR) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. It is clearly observed from the TEM images that the Ag nanoparticles are highly dispersed on the surface of Fe2O3 and are mostly around 5 nm in size. The results reveal that the catalytic activities increased significantly by increasing the Ag content, which causes a strong interaction with the Fe2O3. The catalytic activity clearly correlates with the Ag-Fe2O3 interaction. The experiments showed that the Fe2O3 supported silver catalyst has a good reproducibility and is highly stable for CO oxidation for a 50 h period of time even in the presence of high amount of moisture and CO2 in the feed gas. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.