Urealess NOx Reduction by Carbon Monoxide in Simulated Lean-Burn Exhausts.

The lean NOx aftertreatment is one of the major barriers to the widespread adoption of advanced combustion powertrains for the reduction of both greenhouse gases and toxic exhausts. Urea/SCR, selective catalytic reduction of NOx by NH3 generated through urea decomposition, is commonly regarded as the best way to reduce NOx in low temperature lean exhaust. However, the urea/SCR system has inherent drawbacks, i.e., periodic refill of the aqueous urea solution and a complicated hardware system. Here, we demonstrated a state-of-the-art catalyst that is extremely selective and efficient for reducing NOx, primarily with the most abundant reductant, CO, particularly in the presence of O2 (>5%) at low temperature. Under temperatures lower than 250 °C, IrRu/Al2O3 catalysts achieved higher NOx conversion by CO only than a commercial Cu-based urea/SCR catalyst employing NH3 as a primary reductant. Furthermore, the IrRu catalyst revealed high thermal stability and SO2 tolerance, which are very important factors for real world applications.

A combinatorial chemistry method for fast screening of perovskite-based NO oxidation catalyst.

A fast parallel screening method based on combinatorial chemistry (combichem) has been developed and applied in the screening tests of perovskite-based oxide (PBO) catalysts for NO oxidation to hit a promising PBO formulation for the oxidation of NO to NO2. This new method involves three consecutive steps: oxidation of NO to NO2 over a PBO catalyst, adsorption of NOx onto the PBO and K2O/Al2O3, and colorimetric assay of the NOx adsorbed thereon. The combichem experimental data have been used for determining the oxidation activity of NO over PBO catalysts as well as three critical parameters, such as the adsorption efficiency of K2O/Al2O3 for NO2 (α) and NO (ß), and the time-average fraction of NO included in the NOx feed stream (ξ). The results demonstrated that the amounts of NO2 produced over PBO catalysts by the combichem method under transient conditions correlate well with those from a conventional packed-bed reactor under steady-state conditions. Among the PBO formulations examined, La0.5Ag0.5MnO3 has been identified as the best chemical formulation for oxidation of NO to NO2 by the present combichem method and also confirmed by the conventional packed-bed reactor tests. The superior efficiency of the combichem method for high-throughput catalyst screening test validated in this study is particularly suitable for saving the time and resources required in developing a new formulation of PBO catalyst whose chemical composition may have an enormous number of possible variations.