Bulk mixed oxide catalysts are widely used for many applications, such as catalysts for
selective oxidation processes, electrocatalysts for fuel cells, gas sensors, and solid oxide
electrolysers for the production of hydrogen. VPO (vanadium and phosphorous oxides) are
one of the bulk mixed oxide materials which are of interest nowadays since they are active
catalysts for saturated hydrocarbon activation. With the conventional synthesis procedures
for preparing bulk mixed oxides is really difficult to control the morphology and the
porous structure of these materials. In practice, there are just a few works about the
synthesis of mixed oxide materials with controlled morphology. The aim of this work was
to describe new approaches for the preparation of VPO mixed oxides materials with
spherical morphology.
A carbon material was prepared using cellulose as starting material by hydrothermal
treatment with phosphoric acid at 200ºC and carbonized at 500ºC. SEM analysis showed
that carbon spheres with diameter up to 0.5 m were prepared by this procedure. These
phosphorous containing carbon material was impregnated with the appropriate amount of
vanadium oxide species in order to obtain a monolayer of VOx species on the surface of
the carbon materials following a procedure described previously (1). By this manner, a
carbon supported VOx material with spherical morphology was obtained (VPO/Csph). The
calcination of this material was optimized in order to obtain VPO spheres with diameter up
to 1-2 m and with BET area values close to 100 m2/g. Figure 1 shows a SEM image of
this sample (VPOsph). The presence of vanadium pyrophosphate phase, which has been
described as the active phase of this catalytic system, was identified by XRD and Raman
spectroscopy. Thus, the chemical composition as well as the morphology and porous
structure of these new spherical materials makes them quite promising as catalysts.