Abstract:
Nitrous oxide is a highly reactive gas with several well-known environmental impacts. Its presence in the atmosphere can decrease the stratospheric ozone levels, cause an increase in the greenhouse gas emissions, and contribute to acid-rain formation. Therefore, in this paper the potential and performance of different types of cobalt oxide (Co3O4) catalysts in N2O decomposition and conversion was studied. For this, the catalytic activity of these materials was tested in a differential fixed-bed reactor, operated under steady state conditions. The results obtained in this study show reduced CoO achieved 100% N2O conversion at 250°C; that CoO has a great performance (>95%) in the absence of oxygen and humidity, regardless of the W/F; even at low space velocities (0.1g-sec/mL) and in the absence of humidity the N2O conversion efficiency is still very high (100%); 10% La/CoO has a higher catalytic activity than 10% Ba/CoO, 10% Na/CoO, and 10% W/CoO. The highest catalytic activity (>90%) was reported in samples with 50%La/CoO, even in the presence of 5% H2O and 15% O2.
