The significance of the order of impregnation on the activity of vanadia promoted palladium-alumina catalysts for propane total oxidation

The increased activity of alumina-supported palladium catalysts promoted with vanadium oxide has been investigated. Three different vanadium promoted Pd/Al2O3 catalysts with the same composition but synthesized employing sequential and co-impregnation were tested for the total oxidation of propane. The order of impregnation was critical to produce high activity catalysts. Vanadium and palladium co-impregnation on the Al2O3 support led to the most active catalyst, whereas the step-wise impregnated catalysts show a catalytic performance similar to or slightly better than unpromoted palladium catalysts. The high activity of the co-impregnated catalysts is related to the particle size and oxida…