• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.411-415
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• 2013

• Clean Technology
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.65-72
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• 2013

In this study, we investigated the activity of Pd and Cu co-incorporated on mesoporous silica support such as MCM-41 and SBA-15 for catalytic nitrate reduction in water. In pure hydrogen flow, nitrate concentration was gradually decreased with the reaction time, but nitrogen selectivity was too low due to very high pH of reaction medium after the reaction. In order to acquire high nitrogen selectivity, we utilized carbon dioxide as a pH buffer, which resulted in higher nitrogen selectivity (about 40%). For the above reaction conditions, Pd-Cu/MCM-41 showed better performance than Pd-Cu/SBA-15. The physicochemical properties of both catalysts were investigated to figure out the relationship between the characteristics of the catalysts and the catalytic activity on the catalytic nitrate reduction by $N_2$ adsoprtion-desorption, X-ray diffraction (XRD), $H_2$-temperature programmed reduction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) techniques.