The effect of iron loading and hydrothermal aging on one-pot synthesized Fe/SAPO-34 for ammonia SCR

• Novel Fe/SAPO-34 NH3 SCR catalysts were synthesized by Fe incorporation in the structure.
• Large Fe loadings resulted in unit cell expansion, which was not the case for low loadings.
• An improved NOx conversion of Fe/SAPO-34 at 600–750 °C compared to commercial Cu/CHA.
• Dual Fe/SAPO-34-Cu/CHA has high NOx conversion in a broad temperature range (200–800 °C).

The current commercially-available technique for NOx reduction for diesel engines is the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NOx with NH3 over Cu zeolites. One of the problems of this technique is their limited ability to convert NOx at diesel particulate filter (DPF) regeneration temperatures. In addition, during regeneration of the DPF there is a risk of thermally deactivating the SCR catalyst. Thus, the aim of the current work was the development of a catalytic system that can reduce NOx both at low as well as high temperature and in addition is stable at high temperature. In order to reach this goal, a Fe/SAPO-34 with chabazite (CHA) structure was combined in a system with a commercial Cu/CHA catalyst. Earlier studies have shown that it is difficult to ion-exchange Fe into CHA structures due to steric hindrance, and we have therefore used a novel synthesis procedure which incorporated iron directly into the zeolite structure. Fe/SAPO-34 with three different Fe-loadings (0.27; 0.47 and 1.03 wt.% Fe) were synthesized and the catalysts were characterized using inductively coupled plasma atomic spectroscopy (ICP-AES), N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms, BET area measurements and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The chemical composition, porous and crystalline structure of the parent SAPO-34 sample were found to be only slightly affected by addition of small amounts of Fe in the framework zeolite structure. However, more visible changes in the crystallinity were observed in the Fe/SAPO-34 catalysts with higher Fe content, which were attributed to the unit cell size expansion provoked by integration of higher amounts of Fe into the zeolite SAPO-34 framework. The Fe/SAPO-34 with the lowest Fe-loading (0.27 wt.%) was found to be the best catalyst when considering activity as well as high temperature stability. The synthesized Fe/SAPO-34 catalyst demonstrated a significantly improved NOx reduction performance at high temperatures (600–750 °C) when compared to a commercial Cu/CHA SCR system, and the combined system (Fe/SAPO-34 + Cu/CHA) exhibited a very good performance in a large temperature interval (200–800 °C) that encompasses most diesel exhaust gas conditions.

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