Low temperature oxygen chemisorption as a diagnostic tool for evaluating supported vanadium oxide catalysts for the selective oxidation of methanol to formaldehyde

Selective chemisorption of oxygen at –78 °C on the reduced surface of vanadium oxides, supported on γ-Al2O3, SiO2, TiO2, ZrO2, and CeO2, has been found, for the first time, to correlate with the selectivity of these catalysts for the oxidation of methanol to formaldehyde.