Oxygen vacancy engineering on copper-manganese spinel surface for enhancing toluene catalytic combustion: A comparative study of acid treatment and alkali treatment

Copper-manganese spinel is a low-cost VOCs catalytic combustion catalyst with good performance. Oxygen vacancy has excellent properties for oxygen activation and VOCs dehydrogenation activation, which is beneficial for the catalytic combustion of VOCs. In this study, a large number of oxygen vacancies were introduced on the copper-manganese spinel surface by selective dissolution method (acid treatment and alkali treatment) for catalytic combustion of toluene. Furthermore, the effects of acid treatment and alkali treatment on the catalytic performance, oxygen vacancy amount, physical and chemical properties, and toluene catalytic combustion mechanism of copper-manganese spinel were studied. Both acid treatment and alkali treatment can produce large quantities of oxygen vacancies on the copper-manganese spinel surface. The generation of surface oxygen vacancies can greatly improve the catalytic combustion activity of copper-manganese spinel. At 240 °C, the combustion rate of toluene increased by 8.8 times for the acid-treated catalyst and 11.2 times for the alkali-treated catalyst. The numerous surface oxygen vacancies, Mn3+/Mn4+ at the ratio of 1.11 and appropriate acidity result in the alkali-treated catalyst exhibiting excellent catalytic activity and stability for toluene combustion. This strategy provides a new method to further improve catalytic combustion activity of copper-manganese spinel and a reference for the development of the surface oxygen vacancy engineering of transition metal oxides.