Alumina supported platinum-ceria catalyst for reverse water gas shift reaction

The activation of CO molecules is a fundamental step for their effective utilization. Constructing high-density oxygen vacancies on the surface of reducible oxides is pivotal for the activation of CO. In this work, we prepared a series of 0.5PtCe/AlO ( = 1, 5, 10, or 20) catalysts with varying Ce loading and 0.5 wt% of Pt for the reverse water gas shift (RWGS) reaction. The size of CeO particle increases with Ce loading. Remarkably, the 0.5Pt5Ce/AlO catalyst with an average CeO particle size of 5.5 nm exhibits a very high CO conversion rate (116.4 × 10 mol/(g·s)) and CO selectivity (96.1%) at 600 °C. Our experimental findings reveal that the small-size CeO in 0.5Pt5Ce/AlO possesses a greater capacity to generate reactive oxygen vacancies, promoting the adsorption and activation of CO. In addition, the oxygen vacancies are cyclically generated and consumed during the reaction, which contributes to the elevated catalytic performance of the catalyst. This work provides a general strategy to construct rich oxygen vacancies on CeO for designing high-performance catalysts in C chemistry.