Synthesis and characterization of CuO/TiO2 catalysts for low-temperature CO oxidation

In this paper, the CuO/TiO2 catalysts prepared by the deposition–precipitation (DP) method were extensively investigated for CO oxidation reaction. The structural characters of the CuO/TiO2 catalysts were comparatively investigated by TG-DTA, XRD, and XPS measurements. It was shown that the catalytic behavior of CuO/TiO2 catalysts greatly depended on the TiO2-support calcination temperature, the CuO loading amount and the CuO/TiO2 catalysts calcination temperature. CuO supported on the anatase phase of TiO2-support calcined at 400 °C showed better catalytic activity than those supported on TiO2 calcined at 500 and 700 °C. Among all our investigated catalysts with CuO loading from 2% to 12%, the catalyst with 8 wt% CuO loading exhibited the highest catalytic activity. The optimum calcination temperature of the CuO/TiO2 catalysts was 300 °C. The XRD results indicated that the catalytic activity of the CuO/TiO2 catalysts was related to the crystal phase and particle size of TiO2 support and CuO active component.