Co3O4, NiCo2O4 and LaCo2O4 catalysts were synthesized by the citric acid-ligated method. These catalysts containing Co-oxide active components can largely lower the temperature of sool combustion under tight contact conditions. Under the conditions of loose contact NiCo2O4 cannot promote soot combustion, but LaCo2O4 can effectively promote soot combustion because the nanometric perovskite-type catalyst LaCoO3 produced in the LaCo2O4 sample.

Nickel-molybdenum mixed nitride catalysts were first reported for the ammoxidation of propane to acrylonitrile. It was found that the mixed nitrides exhibited high activity and selectivity to acrylonitrile. The mixed nitride catalyst with 1.0 of Ni/Mo atomic ratios showed the best catalytic properties for propane ammoxidation. The highest yield of acrylonitrile was 28.5% at the propane conversion of 68.4% at 773K

Al2O3 and SiO2 were used to load chromium oxides with incipient-wetness impregnation method. These supported chromia catalysts were evaluated for the dealkylation of C10+ heavy aromatics in hydrogen flow and were characterized with BET, XRD, FT-IR, UV–vis DRS and H2-TPR techniques. The results indicate that the catalytic activity of supported chromia catalysts on SiO2 is higher than that of on Al2O3. Structural characterization results show that surface reduced CrOx species are the active sites for hydrodealkylation of C10+ heavy aromatics. (C10+ heavy aromatics denote the aromatics whose carbon numbers are equal to or greater than 10.) The structural models of CrOx species on the Al2O3 or SiO2 support surface were also proposed.

Various highly dispersed Mo supported catalysts with various carriers were prepared for deep hydrodesulphurization of diesel. The carriers included a high surface area and large pore volume g-Al2O3, two types of meso-microporous composite molecular sieves prepared by incipientwetness impregnation method. A new mesoporous MoSiOx catalyst synthesized with in situ composite method was also studied. The hydrodesulphurization experiments were carried out in a micro-reactor over different catalysts including Mo supported series and a commercial catalyst. Spectroscopic techniques (FT-IR and UV–vis DRS) were utilized to determine the structure of MoOx species. The catalyst haracterizations of BET, XRD, FT-IR, UV–vis DRS and FTIR pyridine adsorption indicated that the existences of metal active component of Mo in the catalysts were highly dispersed nano MoO3 clusters and the Mo series catalysts had high surface areas and plenty of large pores which were propitious to the diffusions of reactant and product molecules. CatNiMo exhibited the highest B/L acidity ratio and higher total concentration of Bronsted acid sites and Lewis acid sites, and its HDS activity also gave the highest in this study to produce a sulphur-free diesel, which was verified by the sulphur content in products analyzed by GC–MS methods.

It is reported that cyclic voltammetry (CV) is a strong tool to investigate catalytic reactions not only in homogeneous catalysis, but also in heterogeneous catalysis. The application of CV measurements in homogeneous catalysis is illustrated through investigation of NO removal (NO reduction and decomposition), which is an urgent task of today in environment catalysis. Results of our study indicate that both the area of redox peak and the symmetry of redox potentials of catalyst are important parameters in determining the catalytic activity, but each has his strong point in different reactions (NO reduction and decomposition). We suggest that CV is a powerful means to select catalysts for NOx removal.