Effect of Ce doping on the performance of MoSn catalyst in the selective oxidation of dimethyl ether to methyl formate

A series of MoSn catalysts doped with different Ce loadings were prepared by hydrothermal method and their catalytic performance in the selective oxidation of dimethyl ether (DME) to methyl formate (MF) was investigated. The results indicate that the introduction of 0.5% Ce can significantly improve the activity of the MoSn catalyst over the 0.5%Ce-MoSn catalyst, the conversion of DME reaches 11.8% at 130 ℃, with a selectivity of 92.2% for MF. The MoSn catalysts were characterized by nitrogen sorption, XRD, NH₃-TPD, CO₂-TPD, H₂-TPR, XPS and in situ-IR; the results illustrate that a small amount of Ce in the MoSn catalyst can obviously increase the quantity of Mo⁵⁺, though it has little effect on the structure of the MoSn catalyst.