Electrochemical promotion of catalysis (EPOC): Perspectives for application to gas emissions treatment

Abstract

Heterogeneous Catalysis and Electrocatalysis can be used very effectively on air pollution
 control. Air emissions coming either from mobile sources or from stationary sources, including
 volatile organic emissions, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide could be well
 converted to harmless non-pollutants at reasonable temperatures with cost-effective systems
 utilizing heterogeneous catalysis and suitable catalysts. Some of the disadvantages of
 conventional heterogeneous catalysts are the high production cost (since most of them are
 metal supported catalysts), the short life time (due to the catalyst deactivation) and the
 weakness to control their activity during the catalytic process. A new phenomenon of Solid
 State Electrochemistry called Electrochemical Promotion of Catalysis (EPOC) combined with
 classical heterogeneous catalysis could be applied in order to overcome some of the above
 problems.
 In this paper we are trying to show with characteristic examples how EPOC could be useful in
 environmentally important reactions (oxidations, reductions, etc). The results show that EPOC
 reveals great perspectives in environmental issues and especially in gas emissions treatment
 technology. The utilization of EPOC could be really useful since we can increase the catalytic
 activity, alter the selectivity to the desirable products and simultaneous control the reaction
 rate during a given electrocatalytic process.