What Catalysts Can Replace Precious Metal Catalysts?

Environmental protection has long been a major global concern, and the application of catalysts in this area has played a significant role. However, cost and sustainability remain key concerns.
In recent years, industrial waste gas and wastewater have become major sources of environmental pollution and a pressing issue. Precious metal catalysts offer significant environmental advantages, but their high cost and limited resources hinder their large-scale application. In contrast, non-precious metal catalysts offer lower costs, and their stability and activity have long attracted significant attention. For example, copper-manganese composite catalysts are a hot topic of research and hold promise as a potential alternative to precious metal catalysts.
Precious metal catalysts, such as platinum, palladium, rhodium, and ruthenium, are characterized by high catalytic activity and low ignition temperatures, maintaining excellent performance even at low temperatures. They are used in industries such as spray coating, printing, fiberglass, UV coatings, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and petrochemicals. When using precious metal catalysts for catalytic combustion, organic waste gas purification rates typically exceed 95%, ultimately producing harmless CO₂ and H₂O. This is highly efficient and produces no secondary pollution.
However, precious metal catalysts are expensive, resources are limited, and they also have technical limitations. They are prone to sintering at high temperatures, leading to the loss of active components and reduced activity.
Non-precious metal catalysts, on the other hand, utilize abundant and inexpensive metal elements such as copper, chromium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, vanadium, and iron as their active components. Although the initial catalytic activity of these catalysts may be slightly lower than that of precious metal catalysts, they possess sufficient activity and excellent thermal stability, demonstrating satisfactory results in a variety of catalytic scenarios.
Non-precious metal catalysts are diverse, and among them, copper-manganese composite catalysts (also known as Hopcalite catalysts) show significant application potential. This catalyst is composed of copper oxide and manganese oxide, with the molar ratio of Mn to Cu typically ranging from 2.2:1 to 3:1, and the active ingredient content exceeds 80%. The main application of copper-manganese catalysts includes converting carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide, playing an important role in gas purification.
The cost of copper-manganese composite catalysts is significantly lower than that of precious metal catalysts, significantly reducing the pressure on companies. Their enhanced activity is attributed to the optimized adsorption energy of highly dispersed active sites, while oxygen vacancies and strong metal-support interactions promote electron transfer and prevent active site aggregation.
Research on non-precious metal catalysts continues to advance, and more low-cost, high-efficiency catalyst materials will emerge in the future, providing new solutions for green chemistry and sustainable development.

author: Hazel
date: 2025-08-20