A Novel Porous Ceramic Membrane Supported Monolithic Cu-Doped Mn–Ce Catalysts for Benzene Combustion

Abstract

Porous ceramic membranes (PCMs) are considered as an efficient hot gas filtration material in industrial systems. Functionalization of the PCMs with high-efficiency catalysts for the abatement of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during dust elimination is a promising way to purify the industrial exhaust gases. In this work, we prepared PCMs (porosity: 70%) in a facile sintering process and integrated Cu-doped Mn–Ce oxides into the PCMs as monolithic catalysts by the sol–gel method for benzene oxidation. Through this method, the catalysts are dispersed evenly throughout the PCMs with excellent adhesion, and the catalytic PCMs provided more active sites for the reactant gases during the catalytic reaction process compared to the powder catalysts. The physicochemical properties of PCMs and catalytic PCMs were characterized systematically, and the catalytic activities were measured in total oxidation of benzene. As a result, all the prepared catalytic PCMs exhibited high catalytic activity for benzene oxidation. Significantly, the monolithic catalyst of Cu0.2Mn0.6Ce0.2/PCMs obtained the lowest temperature for benzene conversion efficiency of 90% (T90) at 212 °C with a high gaseous hourly space velocity of 5000 h−1 and showed strong resistance to high humidity (90 vol.%, 20 °C) with long-term stability in continuous benzene stream, which is caused by abundant active adsorbed oxygen, more surficial oxygen vacancy, and lower-temperature reducibility.