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first 13CO pulse in the titration experiments, a large fraction
of oxygen species deposited over Fe-silicalite during N2O
decomposition was concluded to be irreversibly adsorbed
in the zeolite and unable to oxidize CO. Our results are in
line with a recent work by Kiwi-Minsker et al. [22], who
investigated the oxidation of CO at 523 K over iron-doped
H-ZSM-5, which was pre-covered by oxygen species (Oad)
resulting from N2O decomposition at the same temperature.
These authors concluded that the amount of Oad consumed
limited redox capacity of ion-exchanged iron mordenite for
16
oxygen isotopic exchange during N2 O decomposition ex-
periments over 18O-treated catalysts, which did not conform
to the authors’ expectations.
The results derived from our multi-pulse experiments in
the TAP reactor and from previous works [14–16,18,22,
28,38–40] produce unquestionable evidence that not all of
the atomic oxygen deposited by N2O on active iron sites
in the zeolite exhibit the described reactivity properties for
α-oxygen [20,21,33–36]. The deposited O atoms include
(at least) more than one type of adsorbed oxygen species
with low activity for CH4 oxidation [14–16], C3H8 oxida-
tion [18], CO oxidation [22], O2 desorption during N2O
decomposition [28], and isotopic oxygen exchange [38,39].
(or CO2 formed) corresponds to ca. 65% of the total amount
of atomic oxygen chemisorbed from N2O, whereas in our
case the percentages of oxygen species reacted with CO
amount to 24% at 523 K and 10% at 573 K of the total oxy-
gen species deposited by N2O. To explain the reactivity of a
fraction of adsorbed oxygen species for CO oxidation, Kiwi-
Minsker et al. [22] proposed the presence of two oxygen
pools: one with the oxygen capable of reacting with CO and
the other with adsorbed oxygen, which was not active. These
results are in contradiction to those reported by the group
of Panov [20,21], establishing that the stoichiometry of the
reaction between α-oxygen and carbon monoxide over Fe-
containing ZSM-5 zeolite is 1:1, leading to CO2 in amounts
equal to those of α-oxygen on the surface. It should be noted
that in contrast to our experiments, Panov et al. determined
the CO:Oα stoichiometry from the reaction between Oα (de-
posited by N2O decomposition at 523 K) and CO at 373 K.
The hypothesis of two oxygen pools in the N2O + CO
reaction [22] fits nicely with the mechanistic description of
the N2O + C3H8 reaction [18] and the N2O + CH4 reac-
tion [14–16]. In the latter, Kunimori et al. discerned two
types of adsorbed oxygen species on Fe-beta: “nascent oxy-
gen transient” able to activate CH4 at 473 K and “thermally
accommodated oxygen” that is hardly able to activate CH4
even at 623 K. These studies are further discussed in Sec-
tion 3.4 in relation to our sequential pulse experiments be-
tween N2O and C3H8. The “oxygen pools” concept was also
proposed by Pirngruber [28] to account for the two different
O2 desorption processes during direct N2O decomposition
over Fe-zeolites prepared by sublimation: one oxygen pool
desorbed relatively fast from a small fraction of sites (re-
sponsible for catalytic activity), and a second oxygen pool
desorbed very slowly from the catalyst.
3.4. Interaction of O-species from N2O with reducing
agents: 13CO versus C3H8
The reaction of adsorbed oxygen species generated upon
N2O decomposition with 13CO and C3H8 was investigated at
623 and 673 K by means of pump-probe experiments in the
TAP reactor. To this end, N2O and 13CO (or N2O and C3H8)
were sequentially pulsed, with a time delay between them
in the range of 0–2 s. The application of short and variable
time delays in sequential pulsing represents a unique feature
of the TAP reactor, particularly for the analysis of the influ-
ence of the lifetime of the oxygen species deposited by N2O
on their reactivity for the oxidation of carbon monoxide or
propane.
Fig. 4 shows the conversion of reactants and yield
of products during these experiments over Fe-silicalite,
which indicate the markedly different performance and re-
action mechanism, depending on the reductant applied. At
13
ꢀt = 0 s, that is, when N2O and CO (or N2O and C3H8)
were simultaneously pulsed, the conversion of 13CO (ca.
80%) was significantly higher than the conversion of C3H8
(ca. 50%). Associated with this, the N2O conversion was
also higher with 13CO than with C3H8 (e.g., 70% vs. 50% at
623 K). From this result, it can be concluded that N2O ox-
idizes carbon monoxide more easily than it does propane,
or in other words, that CO is a better reducing agent for the
conversion of N2O to N2 over our catalyst. Furthermore, an-
other revealing feature originally reported in [18] and shown
for comparative purposes in Fig. 4 is the strong decrease in
propane conversion that occurs with an increasing time de-
lay between the N2O and C3H8 pulses, approaching zero at
ꢀt = 2 s. The same behavior was observed in the yield of
the main products, C3H6 and CO2. In contrast, pump-probe
Related studies in agreement with the observations here
and in [14–16,22,28] have been also reported by Jia et
al. [38]. These authors investigated the exchange of 18O2
at 523 K with a Fe/MFI prepared by chemical vapor depo-
sition, which was previously treated in N2 16O at the same
temperature. The experiments unequivocally concluded that
the number of exchangeable oxygen atoms was smaller than
the number of oxygen atoms deposited by N2O. Using Fe-
ferrierite zeolites with Fe/Al = 0.03–0.6, Nováková et al.
13
13
experiments with N2O– CO show that the CO conver-
sion and 1 CO2 yield were not affected by the time delay
between the N2O and 13CO pulses.
3
[
39] also concluded that the amount of oxygen participating
The latter result apparently indicates that the reactivity
18
13
in O isotopic exchange at room temperature is 30–50%
lower than the amount of oxygen captured by the catalysts
upon N2O decomposition at 473 K. The results in [38,39]
agree well with earlier work by Leglise et al. [40] on the
of the oxygen species deposited by N2O toward CO ox-
idation does not change in the range of 0–2 s. In contrast,
the dependencies observed in the N2O–C3H8 system high-
light the vital importance of the lifetime of atomic oxygen