Abstract
Nitric oxide (NO) may cause serious environmental problems, such as acid rain, haze weather, global warming and even death. Herein, a new low-cost, highly efficient and green method for the elimination of NO using zirconium nitride (ZrN) is reported for the first time, which does not produce any waste or any by-product. Relevant experimental parameters, such as reaction temperature and gas concentration, were investigated to explore the reaction mechanism. Interestingly, NO can be easily decomposed into nitrogen (N2) by ZrN powders at 600°C with ZrN simultaneously transformed into zirconium dioxide (ZrO2) gradually. The time for the complete conversion of NO into N2 was approximately 14 h over 0.5 g of ZrN at a NO concentration of 500 ppm. This green elimination process of NO demonstrated good atom economy and practical significance in mitigating environmental problems.
Highlights
Emission of nitrogen oxides (NOx) produced from stationary and mobile combustion sources is one of the major contributors to atmospheric contamination [1]
Catalytic oxidation based on CuOx/Al2O3 and CuOx/LaOx/Al2O3 has been widely used in the treatment of automobile exhaust, which typically operates in the temperature range of 200–400°C [11], yet only less than 50% of Nitric oxide (NO) can be eliminated
zirconium nitride (ZrN) powders were prepared by thermal treatment of Zr in a N2 atmosphere at elevated temperatures, and exhibited apparent activity in the reduction of NO to N2 where ZrN was oxidized to ZrO2
Summary
Emission of nitrogen oxides (NOx) produced from stationary and mobile combustion sources is one of the major contributors to atmospheric contamination [1]. The synthetic methods of ZrN mainly include reactive magnetron sputtering, gas–solid reaction and physical vapour depositionbased methods [20,21], such as pulsed laser deposition [22,23], chemical beam epitaxy [24], ion plating [25] and vacuum evaporation [26]. Among these methods, gas–solid method is the most simple and economical. No ammonia was used and there was no concern of corrosion for the reaction apparatus as well as secondary pollution This suggests that the reaction process is atom economy and green chemistry in nature. As NO was effectively removed at elevated temperatures, the results suggest that ZrN may be used as a green catalyst for gasoline vehicle exhaust treatment that runs at harsh high temperatures
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