Facile preparation of ordered mesoporous MnCo2O4 for low-temperature selective catalytic reduction of NO with NH3.

Ordered mesoporous MnCo2O4 nanomaterials were successfully prepared through the nanocasting route using SBA-15 and KIT-6 as hard templates. These mesoporous nanomaterials were characterized using XRD, BET, TEM, NH3-TPD, H2-TPR, NO-TPD, XPS and DRIFT. The low temperature selective catalytic reduction (SCR) activity of NO with NH3 was investigated, which revealed that 3D-MnCo2O4 using KIT-6 as a template can totally clean all NO over a wide temperature range of 100-250 °C with a gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) of 32,000 h(-1), while 2D-MnCo2O4 with SBA-15 as a template had 95% conversion rate at the same condition. 3D-MnCo2O4 showed the best performance to clean NO due to its typical three-dimensional porous structure, large specific surface area, abundant active surface oxygen species and Lewis acid sites. All the results indicate that a novel, cheap catalyst for catalytic removal of NO can be designed by controlling the morphology at the nanoscale.