CO preferential oxidation under H2-rich streams on copper oxide supported on Fe promoted CeO2

In this work the effect of Fe addition to copper/ceria catalysts on the catalytic activity toward CO-PROX reaction has been studied and related to the modification of textural and redox properties induced by iron. Catalysts have been characterized by the use of BET surface area measure, X-ray diffraction (XRD), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and TPR with different reducing mixtures (CO/N2 and/or H2/N2). Results show that iron promotes a superficial enrichment of highly dispersed copper sites improving catalyst reducibility, especially under CO-containing mixture, thus resulting in an enhanced selectivity of CO-PROX reaction.