Detection of key transient Cu intermediates in SSZ-13 during NH3-SCR deNOx by modulation excitation IR spectroscopy

Abstract

The small pore zeolite Cu-SSZ-13 is an efficient material for the standard selective catalytic reduction of nitrogen oxides (NO_x) by ammonia (NH₃). In this work, Cu-SSZ-13 has been studied at 250 °C under high conversion using a modulation excitation approach and analysed with phase sensitive detection (PSD). While the complementary X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy measurements showed that the experiments were performed under cyclic Cu⁺/Cu²⁺ redox, Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (DRIFTS) experiments provide spectroscopic evidence for previously postulated intermediates Cu–N(O)–NH₂ and Cu–NO₃ in the NH₃-SCR deNO_x mechanism and for the role of [Cu²⁺(OH⁻)]⁺. These results therefore help in building towards a more comprehensive understanding of the reaction mechanism which to date has only been postulated in silico.