(621cz) Assessment Study of Cobalt Oxide and Manganese Oxide Catalyst for Three Way Catalytic Converter

With increase in population and living standards of people the vehicle population is also increasing day by day. Approximately one third of total pollution is due to incomplete combustion in the engine of mobile fleet. CO, HC and NOx are the major pollutants concern to petrol engine. These pollutants have negative impact on air quality as well as on human health and also on environment for which it is expected to follow stringent norms of pollutant emission. These cannot be accomplished only by engine design modification, fuel pre-treatment, fuel additives or simply better tuning of the combustion process. Hence a convenient way of treating petrol off-gases is a three way catalytic converter which contains Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) as catalysts for emission reduction. Such catalysts in order to work effectively, are required to reach at light - off temperature of about 350°C and it also required to work at stoichiometric air-fuel ratio.

Because of exorbitant price of PGMs and significant progress in a metal oxide preparatory method, metal oxide catalysts are drawing more attention recently. Transitional metal oxides are less expensive than the noble catalyst. Among them, MnOx has shown remarked oxidation reduction reaction at lower temperature, Manganese oxide represents a group of  oxidation states which holds ensuring  for the range of reactions. MnOx is compounds with typical berthollide structure and contains laible oxygen,  which enhance the catalytic activity at low temperature. MnOx oxide is also projected as an agent for Oxygen Storage Capacity (OSC) for a three way catalytic converter. CoOx has shown superior activity for HC and CO reduction. In recent years, much attention has been paid to the synthesis of various cobalt oxide catalysts and demonstration of their catalytic ability in CO oxidation. Cobalt oxides especially with promoter exhibit good catalytic properties.

Addition of metals effectively improves the structure of single metal oxides that leads to the increment in activity based on the same synergy effect of MnOx and CoOx. This would have higher potential to work as catalyst for three way catalytic converter. Here in this work, we have assessed the prospect of CoOx and MnOx as catalyst for the three way catalytic converter. Our further efforts will fully elucidate the potential of MnOx- CoOx mix oxide catalyst in the three way catalytic converter so that we can approach the eventual low emission at minimum cost of catalyst.