High-Visible-Light Photoactivity of Plasma-Promoted Vanadium Clusters on Nanozeolites for Partial Photooxidation of Methanol

Abstract

Cold VCl₃-plasma is employed for the preparation of highly dispersed vanadium oxide clusters on nanosized zeolite. Different types of zeolites, such as EMT, FAU (z.X), and Beta, are used. The activity of the prepared catalysts is studied in the selective photooxidation of methanol under polychromatic visible and UV irradiations. The physicochemical properties and catalytic performance of plasma-treated zeolite Beta (P-V₂O₅@Beta) catalyst is compared with zeolite Beta (V₂O₅@Beta) and amorphous silica (V₂O₅@SiO₂) impregnated vanadium oxide catalysts. Pure V₂O₅ is used as a reference material. The set of catalytic data shows that plasma-prepared zeolite Beta based catalyst displays the highest activity. Complementary characterization techniques including XRD, N₂-sorption, FTIR, ionic exchange, pyridine adsorption, Raman, NMR, TPR, and EDX-TEM are used to study the impact of the preparation approach on the physicochemical properties and catalytic performance of photocatalysts.

Keywords: methanol; photocatalysis; selective oxidation; vanadium oxide; zeolite.