Experimental and mechanistic studies on the thermo-electric synergistic catalytic oxidation of acetone over MnO2/TiO2-Ni foam catalyst

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) cause serious environmental and human health risks and must be efficiently removed. In this work, a metal-structured catalyst of Ni foam loaded Mn/Ti oxides was used for the oxidation of acetone, a typical VOC compound. The catalyst was in-situ joule heated when applying an electric current and produced the thermo-electric synergistic oxidation (TEO) effect. Compared with conventional thermal oxidation (CTO), the oxidation rate of acetone significantly increased by 124.19 % and the energy consumption of per unit complete oxidation rate was reduced by 66.67 % in TEO reaction with a 12 A electric current at 200 °C. The efficiency gradually improved (from 16.12 % to 36.14 %) and the energy consumption of per unit complete oxidation rate decreased (from 2.85 W/% to 0.95 W/%) with the increase of electric current. Besides, the thermal (including the catalyst thermal effect and reaction gas thermal effect) and electric effects in TEO reaction were analyzed by the statistical analysis method. With the temperature increasing from 200 °C to 400 °C, the proportion of electric effect slightly decreased while that of reaction gas thermal effect increased from 5.2 % to 18.1 %. It proved that the TEO method has the advantage of improving low-temperature catalytic activity. Furthermore, the mechanism of electric effect was investigated, in which it enhances the conversion of lattice oxygen in TiO2 to surface-adsorbed oxygen species and promotes the oxidation of Mn oxides, sequentially improving the oxidation of acetone.