Photo‐thermo catalytic oxidation over TiO2‐WO3 supported platinum catalyst

Photo-thermo catalysis that integrates photocatalysis on semiconductors with thermocatalysis on supported nonplasmonic metals has emerged as an attractive approach to improve the catalytic performances. However, an understanding of the mechanism from both of the thermo- and photo- catalytic perspectives is missing. Here, the deep insights into the photo-thermo catalysis are achieved via the catalytic oxidation of propane (C 3 H 8 ) over the Pt/TiO 2 -WO 3 catalyst that severely suffers from the oxygen poisoning at high O 2 /C 3 H 8 ratios. After introducing ultraviolet-visible light, the reaction temperature for 70% conversion of C 3 H 8 is lowered to a record-breaking 90 o C from 324 o C and the apparent activation energy drops from 130 kJ/mol to 11 kJ/mol. Furthermore, the reaction order of O 2 is -1.4 in dark but reverses to 0.1 under light, which, therefore, suppresses the oxygen poisoning of the Pt catalyst. The underlying mechanism is proposed based on the direct evidences of the in situ captured reaction intermediates.