Bifunctional zeolites-silver catalyst enabled tandem oxidation of formaldehyde at low temperatures

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 13; no. 1; pp. 2209 - 10
• Main Authors: Li, Na, Huang, Bin, Dong, Xue, Luo, Jinsong, Wang, Yi, Wang, Hui, Miao, Dengyun, Pan, Yang, Jiao, Feng, Xiao, Jianping, Qu, Zhenping
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 22.04.2022; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 119/118; 140/146; 140/58; 639/638/169/896; 639/638/77/885; 639/638/77/887; Aldehydes; Catalysts; Formaldehyde; Humanities and Social Sciences; Intermediates; Low temperature; Methyl formate; multidisciplinary; Organic compounds; Oxidation; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); VOCs; Volatile organic compounds; Zeolites
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29936-8

Bifunctional catalysts with tandem processes have achieved great success in a wide range of important catalytic processes, however, this concept has hardly been applied in the elimination of volatile organic compounds. Herein, we designed a tandem bifunctional Zeolites-Silver catalyst that enormously boosted formaldehyde oxidation at low temperatures, and formaldehyde conversion increased by 50 times (100% versus 2%) at 70 °C compared to that of monofunctional supported silver catalyst. This is enabled by designing a bifunctional catalyst composed of acidic ZSM-5 zeolite and silver component, which provides two types of active sites with complementary functions. Detached acidic ZSM-5 activates formaldehyde to generate gaseous intermediates of methyl formate, which is more easily oxidized by subsequent silver component. We anticipate that the findings here will open up a new avenue for the development of formaldehyde oxidation technologies, and also provide guidance for designing efficient catalysts in a series of oxidation reactions. Formaldehyde oxidation suffers from insufficient activity at low temperatures due to the lack of efficient silver catalyst. Herein, the authors design a tandem bifunctional zeolites-silver catalyst that achieves a 50 times improvement in activity (100% versus 2%) at 70 °C as compared to monofunctional supported silver catalyst.