Micro-kinetic study of reduction of NO on Pt group catalysts

Catalytic reduction using CO has significant potential for the control of NOx using Pt group catalysts as CO is already present in the exhausts and Pt group catalysts have high durability in the presence of SO2 and H2O. Different reaction mechanisms are given in the literature for this reaction based on NO dissociation, -NCO formation and so on, but the exact reaction mechanism capable of capturing experimentally observed features is as yet unavailable. To determine the kinetics and reaction mechanism, we propose here an elementary reaction mechanism based on NO dissociation applicable to Pt group catalysts and simulated with CHEMKIN 4.0.2 using single and multiple PSR (Perfectly Stirred Reactor) model. The activation energies of the elementary steps are found from the Unity Bond Index-Quadratic Exponential Potential (UBI-QEP) method. Excellent agreement between literature experiments and our simulation results are observed for the NO-CO reaction on Pt and Rh catalysts and for the NO-CO-O-2 reaction on Ir catalyst. The effect of temperature on the NO reduction activity is captured well by the model. Additionally the simulations can also point towards importance of particular reactions, selectivity to N-2, effects of surface coverage, effects of residence time and catalytic surface area on NO reduction