Water-gas shift reaction by Au/ferric oxide catalyst

We developed a ferric oxide catalyst with Au nano-particles for WGS reaction at low temperature. The reactivity depended on the preparation condition of the catalyst. When the catalysts with > 3 wt % Au content calcined at 200°C were used, CO conversion reached to the equilibrium conversion at < 150°C. At that time, the ferric oxide was reduced from α-Fe ₂O ₃ to Fe ₃O ₄ and Au accelerated the reduction from the XRD analyses. The deterioration of catalytic activity could be suppressed by the reduction with CO at a very low temperature. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 8th World Congress of Chemical Engineering (Montreal, Quebec, Canada 8/23-27/2009).