Catalytic combustion of trichloroethene over Ru/Al2O3: Reaction mechanism and kinetic study

The performance of 0.5% Ru/Al2O3 for the deep oxidation of trichloroethene (1000–2500 ppmV, WHSV = 55 h−1) in air was studied in this work. Experiments were carried out both at dry and wet (20,000 ppmV of H2O) conditions. Catalytic performance was studied in terms of activity and selectivity for the different reaction products (CO2, HCl, Cl2, C2Cl4, CCl4 and CHCl3). Both the activity and the selectivity for total combustion are higher than other catalysts suggested in the literature for this process (especially Pd and Pt).The main organic by-products are CCl4 and CHCl3, whereas in all the other catalysts tested in the literature, tetrachloroethene is the main organic by-product. This fact suggests that the mechanism of the combustion reaction, involving a double-bond scission, is essentially specific for this catalyst.Kinetic data was fit to a pseudo-first order kinetic expression, providing fairly good fit.