Enhanced plasma-catalytic decomposition of toluene over Co-Ce binary metal oxide catalysts with high energy efficiency.

In-plasma catalysis has been considered as a promising technology to degrade volatile organic compounds. Heterogeneous catalysts, especially binary metal oxide catalysts, play an important role in further advancing the catalytic performance of in-plasma catalysis. This work investigates the toluene decomposition performance over Co-Ce binary metal oxide catalysts within the in-plasma catalysis. Co-Ce catalysts with different Co/Ce molar ratios are synthesized by a citric acid method. Results show that the catalytic activity of Co-Ce catalysts is obviously superior to those of monometallic counterparts. Especially, CoCeO catalyst simultaneously realizes highly efficient toluene conversion (with a decomposition efficiency of 98.5% and a carbon balance of 97.8%) and a large energy efficiency of 7.12 g kW h, among the best performance in the state-of-art literature (0.42 to 6.11 g kW h). The superior catalytic performance is further interpreted by the synergistic effect between Co and Ce species and the significant plasma-catalyst interaction. Specifically, the synergistic effect can decrease the catalyst crystallite size, enlarge the specific surface area and improve the amount of oxygen vacancies/mobility, providing more active sites for the adsorption of surface active oxygen species. Meanwhile, the plasma-catalyst interaction is able to generate the surface discharge and reinforce the electric field strength, thereby accelerating the plasma-catalytic reactions. In the end, the plasma-catalytic reaction mechanism and pathways of toluene conversion are demonstrated.