Please cite this article in press as: Z.-s. Zhang, et al., Non-thermal plasma assisted NO x storage and reduction over a cobalt-containing Pd catalyst using H 2 and/or CO as reductants, Catal. Today (2015), http://dx.
a b s t r a c tA catalyst of the type Pd/Co/Ba/Al was examined for lean NO x trap (LNT) applications, and compared with Pd/Ba/Al and Pt/Ba/Al reference catalysts for NO x storage and reduction using H 2 and/or CO as reducing agents. The activity of Pt/Ba/Al was greatly depressed when using CO as reductant at low temperatures owing to the strong poisoning effect of CO on Pt. The Pd/Co/Ba/Al catalyst exhibited higher activity for NO oxidation to NO 2 and better NO x storage capacity than Pt/Ba/Al and Pd/Ba/Al catalysts, also showed higher NO x reduction activity with CO compared to the other two catalysts. However, it shows relatively low NO x removal efficiency below 250 • C, especially using CO as reductants, indicating that regeneration of stored NO x is the rate limiting step. By employing non-thermal plasma in the rich phase to assist reduction of the stored NO x , the Pd/Co/Ba/Al sample exhibited excellent NO x removal efficiency under plasma assisted lean/rich cycling conditions, affording NO x conversions close to 99% over a broad temperature window of 150-350 • C, even when using CO as the reducing agent.