As precursors of ozone and photochemical smog, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) not only cause innumerableenvironmental problems, but also harm human health. Catalytic oxidation is one of the most potential treatment technologies. The development of efficient and stable monolithic catalysts is of great significance to the removal of VOCs.

Recently, non-noble metal oxides derived from metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have shown excellent catalytic performance, but their preparation process was prone to agglomeration, resulting in reduced activity. In addition, the support also affects the performance of the catalyst. Due to its three-dimensional channel and good thermal conductivity, copper foam has attracted extensive attention in various catalyst supports. However, the low surface area of copper foam was not conducive to the dispersion of active substances, which reduced the formation of multiphase interface between copper oxide and active substances and limited the further improvement of the overall catalyst performance.

Lately, prof. Qingling Liu's team (http://catalysis.tju.edu.cn/) prepared Cu(OH)₂nanorods based on the rapid oxidation reduction method, then made MOFs derivatives in situ growth on them for synthesizing monolithic catalysts. The rod-shaped Cu(OH)₂carrier provided a rich contact area for loading active ingredients and inhibited the aggregation of MOFs derivatives. Compared with the 12CoCu loaded with MOFs derivatives directly on copper foam, the 12CoCu-R showed better catalytic activity for acetone oxidation (T₉₀= 195 ℃). In addition, 12CoCu-R exhibited good stability in cyclic, long-term and water resistance tests. This was attributed to the interfacial interaction between Co and Cu that promoted the rupture of Co-O bond and the formation of more oxygen vacancies, which was conducive to the activation of oxygen molecules. Therefore, this investigation provided a promising method for designing efficient monolithic catalysts and offered reference for other catalytic reactions. 

Relevant research results“Interface-Enhanced Oxygen Vacancies of CoCuOx Catalysts In Situ Grown on Monolithic Cu Foam for VOC Catalytic Oxidation”have been published in the internationally renowned journalEnvironmental Science & Technology(IF:9.028) and selected as thecover paper(https://pubs.acs.org/toc/esthag/current). The first author of this paper is Yanfei Zheng, and the corresponding authors are Professor Qingling Liu and Rui Han.

By: School of Environmental Science and Engineering

Editor: Qin Mian