M(Fe, Co)-BEA washcoated honeycomb cordierite for N2O direct decomposition

•A series of M(Fe, Co)-BEA cordierite monolith is prepared for N2O decomposition.•Alumina sol has activity promotion effect for Fe-BEA monolith; silica sol for Co-BEA.•The binder of lower sol content is more preferable than high sol content.•Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is employed to simulate the N2O decomposition.

Present work prepared a series of dip-coating M(Fe, Co)-BEA monolith catalyst using honeycomb cordierite as the substrate for N2O direct decomposition. The M(Fe, Co)-BEA (M = 1 wt%) powder zeolites were prepared by the ion exchange method, which were then washcoated on the cordierite substrate by silica-gel or alumina-gel as a binder (5 and 10 wt%). The morphologies of the prepared monolithic samples were analyzed by the scanning electron microscopy (SEM), suggesting that the powder of M(Fe, Co)-BEA zeolites can be well dip-coated on the cordierite support by silica-gel or alumina-gel with a relatively lower content (5 wt%). Through the catalytic activity evaluations, it is interestingly found that (I) the alumina-gel has an obvious promotion effect on N2O decomposition for the Fe-BEA monolith samples, while silica-gel can improve the decomposition activity of the Co-BEA monolith samples; (II) the low binder content (5 wt%) is more preferable to the high binder content (10 wt%) for preparation of the monolith catalysts. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was also employed to simulate the N2O direct decomposition over M(Fe, Co)-BEA monolith, wherein the fluid dynamics (mass distribution, pressure drop) were thereafter analyzed.

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