Kinetics and mechanism of hydrogen reduction of MoO3 to MoO2

Kinetics and mechanism of the hydrogen reduction of MoO3 to MoO2 were studied in this work. The experimental findings confirmed that the reduction of MoO3 to MoO2 was a consecutive reaction with the intermediate product Mo4O11. The dual reactions (MoO3 → Mo4O11, Mo4O11 → MoO2) occurred simultaneously, and the rate of the first reaction was higher than that of the second one. The reduction kinetics of MoO3 was analyzed according to a two-interface model, the predicted curves of which agreed well with the experimental results. Using this model, the rate controlling steps and the corresponding activation energies were obtained.