Effects of CeO2 support facets on VOx/CeO2 catalysts in oxidative dehydrogenation of methanol

Abstract

CeO2 supports with dominating facets, i.e., low index (100), (110) and (111) facets, are prepared. The facet effects on the structure and catalytic performance of supported vanadium oxide catalysts are investigated using oxidative dehydrogenation of methanol as a model reaction. In the presence of mixed facets, Infrared and Raman characterizations demonstrate that surface vanadia species preferentially deposit on CeO2 (100) facets, presumably because of its higher surface energy. At the same surface vanadium densities, VOx species on (100) facets show better dispersion, followed by (110) and (111) facets. The VOx species on CeO2 nanorods with (110) and (100) facets display higher activity and lower apparent activation energies compared to that on CeO2 nanopolyhedras with dominating (111) facets and CeO2 nanocubes with dominating (100) facets. The higher activity for VOx/CeO2 (110) might be related to the more abundant oxygen vacancies present on the (110) facets, evidenced from Raman spectroscopic measurements.