Low-Temperature DeNox Catalysts

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It is well established that thermal power plants and heavy industries significantly contribute to air  pollution as they emit various oxides of nitrogen (NOx). Although emission limits have been put in place  by government policies in Europe, NOx continues to be an environmental issue that considerably  compromises air quality and seriously jeopardizes human health. To counteract this problem, thermal  power plants and heavy industries use chemical catalysts to selectively reduce NOx compounds into its  harmless constituents, nitrogen and water. Since these catalysts serve to remove or reduce NOx, they  are called DeNOx catalysts. Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) is a commonly used DeNOx technology in industrial practices. 

Vanadium-Titanium (chemical formula: V2O5-TiO2) complex is widely used as an SCR catalyst along with  Ammonia (chemical formula: NH3) and Urea (chemical formula: CH4N2O) being common reducing  agents. Although V2O5-TiO2 provides favourable DeNOx effects between 75-90%, the disadvantages of  using it as a catalyst is that it is immediately installed after the boiler, which leads to a approximately 40% reduction in efficiency of the  thermal power plant. Additionally, it is not feasible in the long run as it is not cost effective, tends to lose its activity by 10-20% after 5000 hours and only works best at a narrow  temperature window of 300-400℃. At higher temperatures, it can readily deteriorate, leading to the  formation and ingress of toxic and corrosive by-products. 

Our project aims to solve this problem by installing SCR catalysts at the tail-end configuration by  applying them to ceramic blocks and decreasing the temperature window to 100-150℃; hence called  low-temperature DeNOx catalysts. Ceramic blocks act as filters capable of favourably achieving up to  95% DeNox effects, demonstrating low environmental impact. Our low temperature  SCR catalyst installation for research and development purposes is not only limited to NOx emissions.  We are also working to create catalysts to demonstrate the effective reduction of other emissions  including oxides of sulfur (SOx) and carbon dioxide (CO2), among others. Furthermore, we believe it is  necessary to conduct research and develop a technological process for the selection of optimal catalysts  that will eventually be used in the manufacture of ceramic filters. 

The current market volume of catalytic purification systems and services is estimated to be $100 billion. With such an advantageous economic opportunity, our catalysts can be readily implemented worldwide in thermal power plants and heavy industries that use coal (27% globally), petroleum hydrocarbons (24.2% globally) and other fuel types, as primary sources of energy.