A series of AO
x
(10)–MnO
x
(A: Ni, Cu, Fe, and Co) nanocatalysts were
prepared by the solid-state mechanochemical preparation method, and
a combination of the catalytic system contains a fixed bed, and a
dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor was used for lean CH4 catalytic combustion over these samples at low temperature.
Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), X-ray diffraction (XRD),
and H2 temperature-programmed reduction (TPR) analyses
were applied for catalyst characterization. The structural features
of the as-calcined samples showed that the CuO(10)–MnO
x
nanocatalyst possessed the highest specific
surface area (23 m2·g–1) and supreme
reduction properties at low temperatures. The activity results demonstrated
that applying a DBD reactor remarkably improved the catalytic combustion
efficiency of all studied catalysts. Methane combustion performs only
when the operating temperature was higher than 300 °C typically,
but in the presence of a weak plasma, the methane combustion reaction
was improved overall, and the processing temperature was significantly
reduced to lower than 100 °C. DBD could improve the component
reduction to release the lattice oxygen, promoting methane oxidation.
Also, the results presented that the catalyst composition remarkably
influences the CH4 conversion. Among the surveyed samples,
the highest activity belonged to the CuO(10)–MnO
x
nanocatalyst and the CH4 conversion was
about 70% at 100 °C under the combined catalytic system. Moreover,
the results confirmed that plasma could reduce the content of active
metal to some extent while keeping the same performance. The results
showed that the CuO(10)–MnO
x
has
high stability at 350 °C for a 15 h reaction time. Furthermore,
the influence of gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) and O2/CH4 molar ratio was evaluated on the CH4 conversion
of the selected catalyst under two catalytic systems.