Charcoal-supported catalyst with enhanced thermal-stability for the catalytic combustion of volatile organic compounds

• Charcoal originated from thinned wood was used as support material.
• The charcoal-supported transition metal catalyst for VOCs catalytic oxidation.
• Thermal treatment under mild conditions promoted the charcoal thermal-stability.
• The Co addition to the raw charcoal promoted the graphitization of carbon.
• The charcoal-supported Cu-Co catalyst gave high activity for the VOCs oxidation.

In this study, charcoal powder originated from thinned wood was selected as the support material, and transition metals were used as the catalytic active phases to prepare a series of the charcoal-supported catalysts for the catalytic oxidation of volatile organic compounds. We found that the waste wood derived charcoal with poor thermal-stability could be converted into highly active and durable VOCs elimination catalyst in one-step. The addition of transition metal followed by a thermal-treatment in He (at 1000–1400 °C) significantly improved the thermal-stability of charcoal. Co gave the best promotion effect among the tested metals (Co, Ni, and Fe). The transition metals could not only facilitate the transformation of amorphous carbon structure into graphitic structure during the preparation of the support but also serve as an active phase in the VOCs oxidation reaction. When a charcoal-supported Cu-Co bimetallic catalyst was subjected to the toluene catalytic oxidation, the complete oxidation of toluene was achieved at 237 °C, which was far lower than the thermal resistance temperature of the catalyst (350 °C). Especially, in the ethyl acetate catalytic oxidation, the Cu-Co bimetallic catalyst gave an excellent activity that is slightly superior to a Pt/Al2O3 catalyst.

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