IntroductionThe removal of CO, unburned hydrocarbons (HC), and NO from automotive exhaust requires catalytic devices in which these pollutants are eliminated. Catalytic combustion offers one of the most efficient means for controlling atmospheric pollution (1). Although noble metals, such as palladium, platinum, and Rhodium are well known with higher activity (per site than metal-oxide catalysts, they present several disadvantages, such as higher volatility, high cost, and poor availability. Compared with noble metals, base metal catalysts present a lower but still sufficient activity as oxidation catalysts, and have the advantages of lower costs and the potential market in energy generation systems in domestic and small scale industrial applications. For this reason perovskite type compounds have received wide attention, which have been incorporated into the design of the novel combustors (2,3).A perovskite-type oxide has an ABO 3 type crystal structure wherein cations with a large ionic radius have twelve coordination to oxygen atoms and occupy A-sites, and occupy B sites. A and O form a cubic closest packing, and B is contained in the octahedral voids in the packing. If the ionic radii are r A , r B and r O , to form a perovskite crystal structure, the tolerance factor (t) = (r A + r O )/ (r B + r O ) must lie within the range 0.8 <
Abstract:The perovskite-type oxides using transition metals present a promising potential as catalysts in total oxidation reaction. The present work investigates the effect of synthesis by oxidant co-precipitation on the catalytic activity of perovskite-type oxides LaBO 3 (B= Co, Ni, Mn) in total oxidation of propane and CO. The perovskite-type oxides were characterized by means of X-ray diffraction, nitrogen adsorption (BET method), thermo gravimetric and differential thermal analysis (ATG-DTA) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Through a method involving the oxidant co-precipitation it's possible to obtain catalysts with different BET surface areas, of 33-44 m 2 /g, according the salts of metal used. The characterization results proved that catalysts have a perovskite phase as well as lanthanum oxide, except LaMnO 3 , that presents a cationic vacancies and generation for known oxygen excess. The results of catalytic test showed that all oxides have a specific catalytic activity for total oxidation of CO and propane even though the temperatures for total conversion change for each transition metal and substance to be oxidized.