Boosting Ozone Catalytic Oxidation of Toluene at Room Temperature by Using Hydroxyl-Mediated MnO/Al₂O₃ Catalysts

Ozone catalytic oxidation (OZCO) has gained great interest in environmental remediation while it still faces a big challenge during the deep degradation of refractory volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at room temperature. Hydroxylation of the catalytic surface provides a new strategy for regulating the catalytic activity to boost VOC degradation. Herein, OZCO of toluene at room temperature over hydroxyl-mediated MnO/Al₂O₃ catalysts was originally demonstrated. Specifically, a novel hydroxyl-mediated MnO/Al₂O₃ catalyst was developed via the in situ AlOOH reconstruction method and used for toluene OZCO. The toluene degradation performance of MnO/Al₂O₃ was significantly superior to those of most of the state-of-the-art catalysts, and 100% toluene was removed with an excellent mineralization rate (82.3%) and catalytic stability during OZCO. ESR and in situ DRIFTs results demonstrated that surface hydroxyl groups (HGs) greatly improved the reactive oxygen species generation, thus dramatically accelerating the benzene ring breakage and deep mineralization. Furthermore, HGs provided anchoring sites for uniformly dispersing MnO and greatly enhanced toluene adsorption and ozone activation. This work paves a way for deep decomposition of aromatic VOCs at room temperature.