Ultra-efficient removal of NO in a MOFs-NTP synergistic process at ambient temperature

• Published in: Chemical engineering journal (Lausanne, Switzerland : 1996) Switzerland : 1996), 2019-02, Vol.358, p.291-298
• Main Authors: Gong, Xiaoli, Zhao, Ran, Qin, Junqi, Wang, Hanmei, Wang, Dong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: CuBTC; MOFs; NTP
• ISSN: 1385-8947; 1873-3212
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2018.09.222

•A new denitration method which combined MOFs with NTP method was proposed.•An ultra-efficient efficiency of 97.87% was gained requiring no reducing agent.•A synergistic effect between MOFs and NTP was verified.•NO was mainly reduced to N2 by activated CuBTC and NTP at ambient temperature. In this work, a new MOFs-NTP synergistic method was first proposed in order to study the denitration performance. As a highly efficient MOFs material, CuBTC was synthesized by microwave method and combined with non-thermal plasma (NTP) which achieved an ultra-efficiency of 97.87% for NO removal. It was 76.77% and 64.43% higher than that of the CuBTC-alone process and NTP-alone denitration process. The influential factors and characterization analysis (SEM, XRD, N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms, ESR, XPS) were also investigated to study the synergistic effect of the MOFs-NTP denitration process. The results showed that CuBTC could be activated by NTP and generated the coordinatively unsaturated Cu(I)/Cu(II) sites which greatly enhanced the surface catalytic activity of CuBTC. NO was mainly reduced by Cu(I) sites to N2. Cu(II) species can also be reacted with NO to generate Cu2+⋯(NO) adducts. The increase of carbonyl groups (CO) and carboxyl groups (COO) content also improved the chemisorption property of CuBTC. The results have shown that MOFs can serve as an ultra-efficient gas pollution adsorption material and will be more widely to be used in the field of environmental protection in the future.