Abstract
Commercial Cu-exchanged small-pore SSZ-13 (Cu-SSZ-13) zeolite catalysts are highly active for the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NOx with NH3, but distinct from other catalyst systems, their activity is unexpectedly inhibited in the presence of NO2. Here, we combined kinetic experiments, in-situ/operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy, and density functional theory (DFT) calculations to obtain direct evidence that under reaction conditions, strong oxidation by NO2 forces Cu ions to exist mainly as fixed framework Cu2+ species (fw-Cu2+), which impede the formation of dynamic binuclear Cu+ species that serve as the main active sites for the standard SCR (SSCR) reaction. As a result, the SSCR reaction is significantly inhibited by NO2 in the zeolite system, and the NO2-involved SCR reaction occurs with an energy barrier higher than that of the SSCR reaction on dynamic binuclear sites. Moreover, the NO2-involved SCR reaction tends to occur at the Brønsted acid sites (BAS) rather than the fw-Cu2+ sites. This work clearly explains the strikingly distinctive selective catalytic behavior in the zeolite system.
Detection of key transient Cu intermediates in SSZ-13 during NH3-SCR deNOx by modulation excitation IR spectroscopy
