Design and development of novel copper chromite catalysts (unsupported/supported) with enhanced activity

Abstract

More than one hundred and fifty chemicals have been identified in the gaseous emissions of automobiles. Noble metal based three way catalytic converters are being employed to treat the exhaust gases from gasoline powered engines. Base metal catalysts using copper chromite have shown potential to provide an attractive alternative to these noble metal catalysts. The study presented in the paper suggests a new route which bypasses precipitation as well reduction steps being followed in the traditional method of copper chromite catalysts preparation. The paper also discusses about the improvement achieved in the efficiency of the catalysts prepared following the new path. A bench scale tubular reactor was used in the study with the temperature varying from 323 - 573 K, CO/air ratio as 1/40 and W/F equal to 27.1 g.h.mol-1. The compositions of the catalysts under comparison were kept identical having 20% total metal with 10% BaO over γ-alumina support. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.