Novel Ceria and Ceria-based Nanocomposites as Potential Catalysts for Methanol Decomposition and Total Oxidation of Ethyl Acetate

Abstract

The focus of our study is the development of novel ceria-based materials that can be successfully used as catalysts in various environmentally friendly processes due to a significant improvement of ceria intrinsic characteristics. In particular, the combination of ceria with low-dimensional carbon materials such as graphene oxide (GO) and nanodiamond (ND) appears as a very promising approach. Actually, the decrease of ceria crystallite sizes deep in the nanoscale have been found to convert them into highly effective destructive adsorbent materials owing to their high surface area, strong adsorbability, and large number of highly reactive sites. Besides, the addition of a nanostructured carbon containing component (nanodiamond or graphene oxide) contributes to both mechanical and catalytic properties of the obtained nanocomposite hybrids. The results show that the novel ceria and ceria-based composite materials significantly outperform the hydrothermally obtained ceria catalyst used for comparison in both activity and selectivity to CO and hydrogen in the methanol decomposition reaction, and in the process of total oxidation of ethyl acetate due to their significantly improved redox behaviour and textural characteristics.