CHARACTERIZATION OF THE CATALYTIC-OXIDATION OF CARBON-BLACK BY TPD

Temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) of carbon oxides from partiall y oxidized carbon black has been performed to investigate the uncataly sed and catalysed carbon-oxygen reactions (Walker, Jr., et al., Carbon , 29 (1991) 411-421 [1]. TPD data have been elaborated to obtain the d istribution function of the desorption energies of carbon-oxygen surfa ce complexes. The catalysed oxidation of carbon black was carried out in the presence of a potassium-copper-vanadium catalyst which substant ially decreases the temperatures of carbon black burn-off. TPD measure ments of carbon oxides and elaborations of the results have shown that the presence of catalyst noticeably increases the number of surface c omplexes, giving rise to gaseous carbon dioxide, and dramatically modi fies the desorption energy distribution functions of carbon-oxygen sur face complexes by lowering the peak energy values.