Revealing active species of CePO4 catalyst for selective catalytic reduction of NOx with NH3

Abstract Revealing the active species of the catalyst is conducive to the design of more efficient catalyst. Herein, we tried to demonstrate the role of amorphous and crystalline structure on CePO4 catalyst during selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NOx by NH3. Higher calcination temperature promotes the transfer of amorphous structure to crystalline structure on the surface of CePO4. Both amorphous and crystalline CePO4 species on CePO-X samples can provide acid sites for NH3 adsorption, but the former can provide more acid sites. The superior redox property of surface amorphous CePO4 species contributes to its high NH3-SCR activity at low temperature, but it also leads to the decrease of high temperature (>350 °C) NH3-SCR activity due to the oxidation of NH3. In contrast, crystalline CePO4 species shows high activity only at high temperature because of its poor redox property. Therefore, it can be inferred that amorphous and crystalline structure on CePO4 catalyst can be the efficient active species of NH3-SCR at low and high temperature, respectively.