New insights in understanding plasma-catalysis reaction pathways: study of the catalytic ozonation of an acetaldehyde saturated Ag/TiO2/SiO2 catalyst

This paper is a preliminary study intended to straighten out the role of reactive oxygen species in the activation mechanisms occurring in a plasma driven catalysis process for acetaldehyde decomposition. For this purpose, the interaction between the surface, the pollutant and one of the main oxidative species generated by non-thermal plasma, namely ozone, was studied. Acetaldehyde catalytic ozonation over a nanostructured Ag/TiO2/SiO2 catalyst is carried out at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, and followed by diffuse reflectance infrared fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS). For this, the catalyst is firstly saturated with acetaldehyde. At the end of the saturation, acetaldehyde and crotonaldehyde, its condensation product, are identified as the major adsorbed species. In a second step, the surface ozonation is carried out and three additional intermediates are identified, namely, acetone, formic acid and acetic acid. Gaseous CO, CO2, methyl formate and methyl acetate are detected at the DRIFTS outlet, evidencing the partial mineralization of the adsorbed species. A global reaction scheme is proposed for explaining the formation of those adsorbed intermediates and gaseous products. This proposed heterogeneous ozone induced chemistry has to be taken into account when associating non-thermal plasma in air to a catalyst.