A unified intermediate and mechanism for soot combustion on potassium-supported oxides

• DOI: 10.1038/srep04725
• Publication Date: 2014-04-17T09:07:48Z
• Authors: Qian Li; Xiao Wang; Ying Xin; Zhaoliang Zhang; Yexin Zhang; Ce Hao; Ming Meng; Lirong Zheng; Lei Zheng
• Keywords: Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy

The soot combustion mechanism over potassium-supported oxides (MgO, CeO2 and ZrO2) was studied to clarify the active sites discover unified reaction intermediates in this typical gas-solid-solid catalytic reaction. catalytically were identified as free K+ rather than K2CO3, which can activate gaseous oxygen. oxygen spills forms a common intermediate, ketene, before it further oxidized into end product CO2. existence of ketene species confirmed by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. spillover is proposed, explained an electron transfer from through sites. latter for first time since put forward 1950, not only ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) results but also semi-empirical theoretical