Facile Synthesis of N-doped Co3O4 Catalyst for Catalytic Decomposition of N2O under Simulated Real Tail Gases

In this work, N-doped Co3O4 catalyst was prepared using a facile g-C3N4-modified thermal decomposition method and tested for catalytic decomposition of N2O. Due to the addition of N, the crystallite size of Co3O4 in the N-Co3O4 catalyst decreased, and was much smaller than the bare Co3O4 catalyst. Furthermore, the addition of N endowed the N-Co3O4 catalyst with a large specific surface area, excellent redox ability, abundant oxygen vacancies, basic sites, and surface Co2+. As a result, the N-Co3O4 catalyst exhibited higher activity for catalytic decomposition of N2O, and the temperature for the complete catalytic elimination of N2O was as low as 380 °C. Meanwhile, compared with bare Co3O4, Ea decreased from 104.6 to 75.2 kJ·mol−1. Moreover, N-Co3O4 displayed a quite stable catalytic activity and stability with or without 200 ppmv NO, 3 vol