Mechanistic study of the CO oxidation reaction on the CuO (111) surface during chemical looping combustion

Abstract

Cu-based oxides oxygen carriers and catalysts are found to exhibit attractive activity for CO oxidation, but the dispute with respect to the reaction mechanism of CO and O2 on the CuO surface still remains. This work reports the kinetic study of CO oxidation on the CuO (111) surface by considering the adsorption, reaction and desorption processes based on density functional theory calculations with dispersion correction (DFT-D). The Eley–Rideal (ER) CO oxidation mechanism was found to be more feasible than the Mars-van-Krevelen (MvK) and Langmuir–Hinshelwood (LH) mechanisms, which is quite different from previous knowledge. The energy barrier of ER, LH, and MvK mechanisms are 0.557, 0.965, and 0.999 eV respectively at 0 K. The energy barrier of CO reaction with the adsorbed O species on the surface is as low as 0.106 eV, which is much more active in reacting with CO molecules than the lattice O of CuO (111) surface (0.999 eV). A comparison with the catalytic activity of the perfect Cu2O (111) surface shows that the ER mechanism dictates both the perfect Cu2O (111) and the CuO (111) surface activity for CO oxidation. The activity of the perfect Cu2O (111) surface is higher than that of the perfect CuO (111) surface at elevated temperatures. A micro-kinetic model of CO oxidation on the perfect CuO (111) surface is established by providing the rate constants of elementary reaction steps in the Arrhenius form, which could be helpful for the modeling work of CO catalytic oxidation.