• Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering
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• v.35 no.11
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• pp.2185-2190
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• 2018

Methane activation through oxychlorination is in the spotlight due to the relatively mild reaction conditions at atmospheric pressure and in the temperature range of $450-550^{\circ}C$. Although $CeO_2$ is known to exhibit good activity for methane oxychlorination, significant amounts of by-products such as $CO_2$, CO and carbon deposits are produced during the reaction over $CeO_2$. We investigated the effect of iron in $FeO_x/CeO_2$ catalysts on methane oxychlorination. $FeO_x/CeO_2$ with 3 wt% iron shows the maximum yield at $510^{\circ}C$ with 23% conversion of methane and 65% selectivity of chloromethane. XRD and $H_2$ TPR results indicate that iron-cerium solid solution was formed, resulting in the production of more easily reduced cerium oxide and the suppression of catalysts sintering during the reaction. Furthermore, the selectivity of by-products decreased more significantly over $FeO_x/CeO_2$ than cerium oxide, which can be attributed to the facilitation of HCl oxidation arising from the enhanced reducibility of the former sample.