(446c) Microfibrous Entrapped Catalysts for Low Temperature CO Oxidation

CO is harmful to humans as well as the environment, and catalytic oxidation of CO to CO2 is an efficient way of removing CO. CO oxidation at low temperature in the presence of moisture still poses a major challenge. A novel Pt ? ceria on silica catalyst has been developed for this application, the catalyst showed a significant activity for this application. Increased activity of the catalyst with decreasing particle size (η<0.95, even at 100μm), indicated a clear diffusion limitation. Conventional packed bed (PB) of smaller particles poses problems like packing issues, bed channeling, flow maldistributions, etc. Considering these issues, application of an alternate structure of matter, with catalyst particles entrapped in microfibers (microfibrous entrapped catalysts: MFECs) was studied for CO oxidation. MFECs immobilize small particles by sinter-locking them in a fibrous mesh, resulting in higher voidages (0.6 ? 0.85), and uniform flow distributions, which results in better heterogeneous contacting efficiency. Microfibrous entrapped Pt-CeO2/SiO2 catalyst demonstrated a significant improvement in CO oxidation activity compared to a conventional PB configuration. Further, entrapment in Ni microfibers improved overall activity of catalyst bed due to better intra-phase heat transfer rate owing to higher effective thermal conductivity of MFEC. For example, MFEC with ⅓rd of catalyst loading as that of PB of same particle size, outperformed PB configuration.