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A team at the TSU Laboratory of Catalytic Studies of the Faculty of Chemistry has published an article in the top-ranked journal Applied Catalysis B: Environmental. The laboratory staff is developing environmental catalysts to neutralize hazardous substances, in particular, carbon monoxide and soot particles, which are a component of vehicle exhausts.

The project aims to create new methods for designing catalysts based on silver, platinum, and cerium nanoparticles. The chemists pay special attention to solving applied problems of environmental catalysis: the resulting compounds can be used to purify the air from dangerous volatile organic compounds.

- Our project is fundamental: we are developing fundamentally new ways of constructing functional materials, in particular, catalysts. Studies are focused on the stabilization of nanoparticles, clusters, and individual silver and platinum atoms on the surface of cerium oxide due to strong binding to the surface. This helps us to significantly improve the activity of such catalysts and to obtain affordable materials with a low content of expensive precious metals, -explains Grigory Mamontov, project manager, a senior researcher at the Laboratory of Catalytic Studies.

The task of the developed catalysts is to neutralize the emissions of hazardous substances from industrial enterprises and transport. Each car has a catalyst block, where a complex system is installed that sequentially neutralizes the exhaust. The same blocks should be provided for in production. The catalysts developed in the course of basic research can be further developed for a specific practical task of air purification.

The research is conducted by the Laboratory of Catalytic Studies team with the participation of a group of professors: Leonarda Francesca Liotta (H-index 39) from the Institute for Nanostructured Materials Research of the Italian Research Council (CNR-ISMN), Palermo, Italy; and Maria Grabchenko, a junior researcher at the Laboratory of Catalytic Studies, the first author of the published highly-rated article, who successfully completed an internship at this institute in 2017-2018.

Applied Catalysis B: Environmental is a top-ranked journal, included in the top 10% of journals in catalysis, in particular environmental (impact factor 14.229 (Q1), subject ranking in Chemical Engineering, Chemistry.

More information:
M.V. Grabchenko et al. The role of metal–support interaction in Ag/CeO2 catalysts for CO and soot oxidation, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.apcatb.2019.118148

Provided by Tomsk State University