Review Article A Review on Preferential Oxidation of Carbon Monoxide in Hydrogen Rich Gases

In this review, recent works on the preferential oxidation of carbon monoxide in hydrogen rich gases for fuel cell applications are summarized. H2 is used as a fuel for polymer-electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). It is produced by reforming of natural gas or liquid fuels followed by water gas shift reaction. The produced gas consists of H2, CO, and CO2. In which CO content is around 1%, which is highly poisonous for the Pt anode of the PEMFC so that further removal of CO is needed. Catalytic preferential oxidation of CO (CO-PROX) is one of the most suitable methods of purification of H2 because of high CO conversion rate at low temperature range, which is preferable for PEMFC operating conditions. Catalysts used for COPROX are mainly noble metal based; gold based and base metal oxide catalysts among them Copper-Ceria based catalysts are the most appropriate due to its low cost, easy availability and result obtained by these catalysts are comparable with the conventional noble metal catalysts. Copyright © 2011 BCREC UNDIP. All rights reserved ( Received: 22nd October 2010, Revised: 12nd January 2011, Accepted: 19th January 2011 ) [How to Cite : A. Mishra, R. Prasad. (2011). A Review on Preferential Oxidation of Carbon Monoxide in Hydrogen Rich Gases. Bulletin of Chemical Reaction Engineering & Catalysis , 6 (1): 1-14. doi:10.9767/bcrec.6.1.191.1-14 ] [How to Link / DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.9767/bcrec.6.1.191.1-14 || or local:  http://ejournal.undip.ac.id/index.php/bcrec/article/view/191 ] | View in


Introduction
Fuel cells convert chemical energy directly into electrical energy with high efficiency and practically zero emission of pollutants.Fuel cell technology has a number of applications, such as micro/ portable power, stationary power for buildings and distributed generation for remote areas.Prototype vehicles adopting fuel cells in an effort to reduce atmospheric pollution are becoming very popular [1][2][3].Fuel cells come in many varieties; however, they all work in the same general manner [4].A variety of fuel cells for different applications is under development [5][6][7]: solid polymer fuel cells (SPFC), also known as proton-exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) operating at 80 0 C, alkaline fuel cells (AFC), operating at 100 0 C, phosphoric acid fuel cells on-board using a reformer, together with significant amounts of CO and CO2.A subsequent water-gas-shift (WGS) reaction reduces the amount of CO to 1% [9].The anode catalysts of PEMFC which are operated at relatively low temperatures (80-120 0 C) have been demonstrated to be easily poisoned by traces of CO (even around 1ppm) in the hydrogen rich feed gas.Therefore it is necessary to eliminate the traces of CO in the hydrogen stream with a minimum hydrogen loss [10].
Several different methods for CO removal from the hydrogen stream have been reported [1].The main methods are as follows: i) Purification with hydrogen selective membrane, ii) CO methanation, iii) Pressure swing adsorption, and iv) Preferential oxidation (PROX) of CO.For the application of small-scale fuel processor, the selective membrane purification, CO methanation, and the CO-PROX have been considered to be promising.Many research projects sanctioned [8,87,92,[94][95][96][97][98][99][100], several Ph.D. theses approved [11][12][13][14], a number of patents granted [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] and numerous studies have been conducted on preferential oxidation of CO in H2 rich gases.Ghenciu [3] reviewed fuel processing catalysts for hydrogen production in PEM fuel cell systems, emphasising WGS reaction.Park et al. [4] reviewed progress in selective CO removal in a H2-rich stream.This brief article is an attempt to summarise the recent progress on main methods of CO removal in brief and detailed of preferential oxidation of CO.This review paper will be beneficial to the application of fuel cells as well as chemical, petrochemical industries and refineries utilizing very pure hydrogen.

Purification with hydrogen selective membrane
One alternative to purify hydrogen is the use of hydrogen selective membranes due to their easy preparation, low energy consumption and cost effectiveness at low gas volumes [22,23].There are several kinds of membranes which can be organized into three categories: (i) polymeric, (ii) metallic and (iii) inorganic membranes like zeolite membranes.Polymer membranes have several advantages like having a low cost and not causing significant pressure drops.However, mechanical strength problems and high sensitivity to swelling and compacting reduce their usefulness for this purpose [24,25].The second type, metallic membranes, has an excellent hydrogen permeance but suffer from hydrogen embrittlement at low temperatures [26].This is eliminated by using alloys but the product is more expensive.The latter, zeolite membranes, combine the general advantages of inorganic membranes like temperature stability and solvent resistance with those of polymeric membranes as they are composed of a thin homogeneous layer.
Fig. 1 shows a schematic of the semipermeable membrane separation process, in which the driving force is often pressure or concentration gradient across the membrane.Hydrogen separations from highly supercritical gases, such as methane, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen are easy to achieve by polymeric membranes, because of the extremely high diffusion coefficient of hydrogen relative to all other molecules except helium.
To meet the requirements of PEMFC feed such as a high perm-selectivity for H2 and a high H2 permeability, the dense phase metal membrane in which the solution diffusion is dominant has been considered to be most plausible [27].Sotowa et al. [28] compared the Pt-loaded Y-type zeolite membrane (PtY membrane) and a Rh-loaded γ-Al2O3 membrane and found that in PtY membrane the H2 permeance is very high because of the large zeolitic pores.The permeation selectivity for H2 over other gases is of the order of 10.CO oxidation can be largely attributed to the slow diffusivity of CO in the pores, resulting in a long residence time of CO in the micro-pores.While in SiO2/Rh/γ-Al2O3 membrane the H2 permeance is smaller than that of the PtY membrane, but the separation selectivity of H2 is very high.Most of the CO molecules are rejected at the feed side surface of the H2-selective SiO2 layer.The oxidation rate in the Rh/γ-Al2O3 layer is greatly increased because the CO concentration is decreased nearly to the threshold value.Bernardo et al. [29] observed that the best CO removal was obtained using a low-permeance

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Copyright © 2011, BCREC, ISSN 1978-2993 Figure 1.Simplified concept schematic of membrane separation zeolite catalytic membrane (Q) at low pressure.This catalytic membrane was found to be very stable with no detectable deactivation over many hours (200 h) of operation.In recent work, Varela-Gandía et al. [30] prepared membranes by ionexchange of Na-LTA/carbon membranes, they concluded that selectivity for hydrogen purification was very high but further efforts need to be undertaken in order to improve the flux through the composite membrane materials.

CO Methanation
CO methanation is another method for the purification of hydrogen gas mixture.The following reactions (1-2) can be carried out over the hydrogenation catalyst in the presence of CO, CO2, and H2 which are main gaseous components in the exit of water-gas shift reactor.CO(g) + 3H2(g) → CH4(g) + H2O(g) The selective CO Methanation (Eq. 1) can be promising because this does not require the introduction of any gases such as air in the PROX system [4].Complete removal of CO by methanation in H2-rich gas stream is performed over different metal catalysts.Ni/ZrO2 and Ru/TiO2 were the most effective catalysts for complete removal of CO through the methanation.These catalysts can decrease a concentration of CO from

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0.5% to 20 ppm in the gases formed by the steam reforming of methane with a significantly low conversion of CO2 into methane [31].Dagle et al. [32] used Ru-based catalysts and found that it was capable of reducing CO in a reformate to less than 100 ppm over a wide temperature range from 240 to 280 0 C, while keeping hydrogen consumption below 10%.[33][34][35][36].CO methanation experiments showed that it is difficult to reach the goal of deep CO removal depth of below 10 ppm.A two-stage methanation method by applying two kinds of catalysts is proposed by Li et al. [37] that is, one catalyst with relatively low activity and high selectivity for the first stage at higher temperatures, and another one with relatively high activity for the second stage at lower temperatures.CO can be removed from 10000 ppm to below 1000 ppm at the first stage and to below 10 ppm at the second stage.Generally all catalysts used for COmethanation are noble metal based which are very costly and temperature (300-340 0 C) for the reaction was also very high.Besides that in CO methanation, hydrogenation of CO takes place in which hydrogen is consumed in large amount so popularity of this method is less than preferential oxidation of carbon monoxide [4].

Pressure swing adsorption
The current technology used to purify hydrogen from synthesis gas is pressure swing adsorption (PSA).It is a technology used to separate some gas species from a mixture of gases under pressure according to the species molecular characteristics and affinity for an adsorbent material (activated  [38,39] that preferentially adsorbs a family of related components from a mixed feed. Pressure swing adsorption processes rely on the fact that under pressure, gases tend to be attracted to solid surfaces, or "adsorbed".The higher the pressure, the more gas is adsorbed; when the pressure is reduced, the gas is released, or desorbed.PSA processes can be used to separate gases in a mixture because different gases tend to be attracted to different solid surfaces more or less strongly.Although many adsorbents are commercially available, there are still demand for robust (high chemical stability against other contaminants, high mechanical stability against attrition), cheap (low synthesis cost since adsorbent cost represents a significant part of the investment cost) and energy efficient materials [40][41].The basic schematic flow diagram of PSA technology is shown in fig. 2. Production of pure hydrogen from a gas mixture containing 60-90 mol% hydrogen by using pressure swing adsorption (PSA) processes has become the state-of-the-art technology in the chemical and petrochemical industries [42].Several hundred PSA-H2 process units have been installed around the world (USA, France, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, China, etc).The two most common gas streams used for this application are (a) the steam-methane reformer off-gas after it has been further treated in a water-gas shift reactor and (b) the refinery off-gas from various sources.The typical feed gas compositions to the PSA system for these cases are (a) 70-80% H2, 15-25% CO2, 3-6% CH4, 1-3% CO, and trace N2; and (b) 65-90% H2, 3-20% CH4, 4-8% C2H6, 1-3% C3H8, and less than 0.5% C4+ hydrocarbons.Both feed gases are generally available at a pressure of 8 to 28 atm and at a temperature of 21 to 38 0 C, and they are generally saturated with water.The PSA processes are designed to produce a dry hydrogenrich product stream at the feed gas pressure containing 98-99.999 mol% H2 with a H2 recovery of 70-90%.Yang et al. [44] Used a layered bed of activated carbon and zeolite for PSA process and reported that High purity H2 product (99.999%)can be produced at feed gas pressure (8 atm) from synthesis gas (H2: 72.2%, CH4: 4.17%, CO: 2.03%, CO2: 21.6%).
The H2 recovery increased with increasing the linear velocity and adsorption time.Majlan et al. [45] reported that Adsorption of CO and CO2 in mixtures of H2/CO/CO2 was achieved using compact pressure swing adsorption (CPSA) system to produce purified hydrogen for use in fuel cell.A CPSA system was designed by combining four adsorption beds that simultaneously operate at different processes in the pressure swing adsorption (PSA) process cycle.They concluded that Activated carbon has been successfully used to adsorb CO.The adsorption capacity was 0.13 mmol CO/g.CPSA was able to reduce the CO concentration in H2/ CO/CO2 mixture from 4000 ppm to 1.4 ppm and CO2 from 5% to 7 ppm.For the continuous adsorption but it is not suitable for non-stationary applications, due to the large dimensions and high costs of the compressor.

Preferential oxidation of CO
The preferential oxidation (PROX) process is one of the most effective methods for the removal of CO trace from the reformate stream.PROX of CO is a reaction to convert CO in a H2-rich gas mixture to CO2 with minimal H2 consumption.Therefore, preferential oxidation process is an indispensable step to reduce the concentration of CO to 10 ppm level in a H2 generation process [4].The flow diagram of hydrogen purification by CO-PROX is shown in fig. 3.
The following reactions (3)(4) can occur in the PROX system.
H2(g) + ½ O2(g) → H2O(g) ∆H 0 298 = -241.82kJ/mol (4) In the first reaction (eq.3) an excess of oxygen is provided, at around a factor of two, and about 90% of the CO is transformed.In the second step a substantially higher oxygen excess is used, at approximately a factor of 4, which is then processed with the remaining CO, in order to reduce the CO concentration to less than 10 ppm to also avoid excess CO-fraction loading, the Equation ( 4) is highly undesirable due to the consumption of hydrogen as 100% selectivity is not possible, oxidation of H2 takes place and H2O formed, which reduces the activity of prox catalyst.The disadvantage of this technology is its very strong exothermic nature, coupled with a very narrow optimal operation temperature window, and is best operated between 80 0 C and 177 0 C, yielding a steam loss of around one percent [36,62,65,80], Effective cooling is therefore required.In order to minimise steam generation (eqn.2), excessive dilution with nitrogen is used.Additionally the reaction is interrupted with an intermediary cooler before proceeding to a second stage.

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The instrumentation and process control complexity requirements are relatively high.The advantage of this technique over selective methanation is the higher space velocity, which reduces the required reactors size.The PROX of CO is a catalytic reaction where the catalyst plays a significant role in enhancing the CO oxidation and suppressing H2 oxidation.The key factors to achieve very low CO concentration fuel, is synthesizing a highly active, stable, and selective catalyst for PROX reaction in H2-rich gas mixture at the lower temperature range [45].

Catalysts for CO-PROX
The reported promising catalysts for CO-PROX can be grouped into three classes: 1

Supported noble metal catalysts
Many workers  studied about preferential oxidation of CO over noble metal based catalysts.Generally, Pt, Rh, Ru and Ir based catalysts fall in this category.The noble metal based catalysts are conventionally used for the CO-PROX.Hulteberg et al. [46] studied different noble metal catalysts for activity in the CO-PROX in hydrogen-rich streams and concluded that Pt on Co -oxide is a highly active catalyst for the reaction.Huang et al. [47,48] used iridium based catalysts (Ir/CeO2) which exhibited excellent performance in PROX process.Reductive pre-treatment of Ir/CeO2 was found to be beneficial to obtain higher CO oxidation activity at low temperatures.The presence of 1.60 wt% of Ir was essential for

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obtaining high activity in the PROX reaction.Recently, Zhang et al. [49] prepared bi-functional catalyst Ir-FeOx/SiO2, which was very active and selective for preferential oxidation of CO under H2rich atmosphere.
Tanaka et al. [50] reported high performance in preferential oxidation of CO in rich hydrogen over K-promoted Rh/USY (K/Rh=3) catalysts.The concentration of CO was below 10 ppm after this process.The addition of potassium to Rh/USY also promoted the activity of CO oxidation without hydrogen.Chin et al. [51] reported over SiO2-and Al2O3-supported Ru Catalysts, and concluded the three major advantages over a conventional Pt catalyst: first lower operating temperatures, second ability to completely eliminate CO in a single step under realistic space velocities (120,000 mL/g h) and O2 concentrations (O2/CO = 1) without compromising the CO2 selectivity, and third wide operating temperature windows which yield CO outlet concentration of less than 30 ppm even in the presence of H2O and CO2 (120-170 0C for Ru/ SiO2 and 180-200 0 C for Ru/Al2O3).Kim et al. [52] prepared various Ru catalysts supported on different supports such as yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ), ZrO2, TiO2, SiO2 and γ-Al2O3 with a wet impregnation method.Among them, Ru/YSZ showed the highest CO conversion especially at low temperatures and it can reduce the high inlet CO concentration to be less than 10 ppm even in the presence of H2O and CO2.
Pt and Pt based catalysts are the most commonly used catalysts of this category and shows better results than other noble metal catalysts.Ayastuy et al. [53] used MnOx/Pt/Al2O3 and reported that high CO conversion at high temperature range.Ceria supported Pt with alumina also reported high activity and selectivity for CO-PROX [54][55][56][57][58][59].Many works [60][61][62][63][64][65] have been done over Pt-Fe/mordenite catalysts and concluded that these catalysts gives good result even in presence of H2O.Alkali metal modified catalyst increases the activity but not effect the selectivity of CO-PROX [66].Guerrero et al. [67] studied the promotional effect of Nb on Pt supported on alumina or on niobia, for the preferential oxidation of CO (PROX) in hydrogen.The results show a unique effect of Nb as a promoter to Pt.At low Nb loadings on Pt/ alumina, the CO oxidation activity and selectivity are significantly increased.The CO selectivity is 100% at conversions up to about 60%.Pt-Co silica or alumina aerogel catalyst exhibited excellent ability for the carbon monoxide removal but at comparatively higher temperature [68,69].
Copyright © 2011, BCREC, ISSN 1978-2993 Sebastian et al. [71] studied Pt supported on different zeolitic materials (MOR, ZSM-5, FAU and ETS-10).The behaviour of the Pt-ETS-10 and Pt-FAU catalysts has been investigated in more depth and the results obtained have been compared and related to the different characteristics of the supports.The best results in the presence of H2O and CO2 were obtained with Pt-FAU catalysts, showing stable catalytic activity and complete conversion of CO at 166 0 C.
Luengnaruemitchai et al. [72] reported that complete CO conversion obtained at temperature around 200 0 C over A-type zeolite-supported Pt catalysts; the presence of H2O depressed the activity.But bimetallic AuPt supported on zeolite catalysts have no effect of H2O or CO2 present in the reaction [72].Pt3Co and PtCu intermetallic catalyst give high CO conversion at low temperature [73].Recently, Consuegra et al. [74] reported that the activity and selectivity for the PROX process can be strongly enhanced by the phenomenon of electrochemical promotion.This phenomenon would allow optimizing the amount of promoter under the expected dynamic conditions of a PROX unit which is not possible with a conventional promoted heterogeneous catalyst.

Gold based catalysts
Gold based catalysts have high activity for the CO-PROX especially at low temperature.Luengnaruemitchai et al. [75] found that the performance of catalyst depends on the preparation method of Au/CeO2 catalysts.They reported that the Au/CeO2 catalyst prepared by coprecipitation method exhibited the highest activities but presence of CO2 in feed stream reduces the CO conversion.Wang et al. [76] used Au/CeO2-Co3O4 catalysts with a Ce/Co atomic ratio from 0.1 to 0.6 which were prepared by depositionprecipitation. CO conversion is 91% while selectivity is around 51 % at temperature 80 0 C. Several workers [77][78][79] reported good results for CO-PROX on nano gold catalysts.Quinet et al. [80] studied the effect of molecular hydrogen on CO Oxidation over an unsupported silver-free gold powder and concluded that the support-free pathway for the oxidation of CO exists and is enhanced by the presence of hydrogen.However, even with hydrogen, our unsupported particles are found to be less efficient than the oxide-supported ones to activate oxygen, probably because of a low concentration of low-coordination active sites present at the surface of large gold particles.Au/ TiO2 catalyst possesses good catalytic activity for PROX between 25 and 50 0 C and raising the
Bimetallic Au-Cu catalysts prepared by the deposition-precipitation method for selective CO oxidation reaction showed that Cu addition increased the selectivity for CO oxidation decreasing the H2 consumption [85].The interaction between Cu and Au seemed to be able to modify the catalytic properties of Au active sites for CO oxidation.Other than titania, ZrO2 supported Au catalysts obtained by direct oxidation of bulk alloy shows good results for CO-PROX at high temperature [86].Ceria supported bimetallic catalyst [87] and rare earths-modified ceriasupported gold catalysts [88] exhibited the highest catalytic activity, selectivity, and high stability.
Manzoli et al. [89] prepared Au/doped ceria catalysts by deposition-precipitation method modified by various cations (Sm 3+ , La 3+ and Zn 2+ ).The following activity order was observed: Au/Zn-CeO2 > Au/Sm-CeO2 > Au/CeO2 > Au/La-CeO2.Catalysts showed improved tolerance towards the presence of CO2 and H2O in the PROX feed.Little amount of gold with ceria catalyst showed suppressed activity in presence of CO2 [90].Au/iron oxide system reported less selectivity at high temperature range for CO oxidation [91].Naknam et al. [92] studied over Au/ZnO and Au/ZnO-Fe2O3 catalysts prepared by photo-deposition method under UV light, exhibited higher catalytic activity, where it achieves a complete conversion of CO at 30 0 C and 50-73% CO selectivity.The presence of a mixed oxidation state of Au is the active site for the PROX reaction.In recent work Laguna et al. [93] concluded that gold catalyst prepared with the CeFe10 as support is a very active for PROX reactions, especially at low temperatures compared with Au/CeO2.Overall gold based catalysts are suitable only for low temperature range, same as the noble metal based catalysts.
A comparative study was investigated, in which [94] nano-structured gold catalysts supported on CeO2 and MnO2 prepared by depositionprecipitation method.The authors concluded that Au/CeO2 is more active than Au/MnO2 towards selective CO oxidation.

Base metal oxide catalysts
The preferential oxidation of carbon monoxide in the presence of large quantities of hydrogen was carried out over different supported base metal catalysts.The catalytic formulations [95] involved several transition metals (Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Zn) Copyright © 2011, BCREC, ISSN 1978-2993 supported on oxides with different acidic, basic and redox properties (MgO, La2O3, SiO2-Al2O3, CeO2, Ce0.63Zr0.37O2).Out of them, the only ceria-and ceria-zirconia-supported copper catalysts appeared to be as active as the costly platinum group catalysts classically used for this reaction.The well -known enhancement of oxidation activity of copper, when supported on reducible oxides like CeO2, was attributed to a ''synergistic'' effect [96].It is proposed that well-dispersed CuO on CeO2, which is reducible at a lower temperature with respect to bulk CuO, could adsorb CO better.As a result, this catalyst exhibited high activity/ selectivity for low-temperature CO oxidation [97].Easy availability and low cost make these catalysts able to replace the other noble metal and gold based catalysts [98].The characteristics of catalysts change according to the preparation method used.
The catalytic properties are strongly affected by the synthesis procedures of the base metal catalysts.Avgouropoulos [99] reported the influence of the preparation method on the physicochemical and catalytic properties of CuO-CeO2 catalysts for the selective CO oxidation in simulated reformate gas.They reported ranking order of the preparation methods of the CuO-CeO2 catalyst in CO oxidation activity is as follows: ureanitrates combustion > citrate-hydrothermal > coprecipitation > impregnation.Liu et al. [100] reported that CuO-CeO2 catalyst prepared by chelating method has a superior catalytic performance for the preferential oxidation of CO in rich hydrogen, compared with the CuO-CeO2 catalyst prepared by co-precipitation method.Cu supported ceria catalysts give very good results for CO-PROX even in presence of CO2 and H2O in feed stream and at the PEMFC operating condition [100 -107].

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nano-materials by the milling method.All the solids were active in the preferential oxidation of CO in the presence of hydrogen, being the modified with copper the most active.CuMn2O4 nanocatalysts [117] synthesised by silica aquagel confined co-precipitation were analysed for CO-PROX.at moderate temperature, even at high spatial velocities.
Cobalt is another base metal which gives good results for CO-PROX reaction [118][119][120][121][122][123].Zhao et al. [118] prepared Cobalt catalysts supported on metal oxides (ZrO2, CeO2, SiO2, Al2O3, and TiO2).It was found that the Co/ZrO2 catalyst had the highest CO oxidation activity from the series.CoOx/ZrO2 catalyst was synthesized and studied for the PROX reaction under various reaction conditions and indicated that in the temperature window of interest (80-200 0 C), this catalyst had potential for obtaining high conversions of CO with high O2 selectivity to CO2 [119].MnOx modified Co3O4-CeO2 catalysts shows almost 100% conversion of CO present in gas mixture as MnOx into Co3O4-CeO2 led to more uniform mixing of Co3O4 and CeO2 particles and led to finely dispersed and high valence state cobalt oxides species, which contributed to high catalytic activity of Co-Ce-Mn mixed oxides catalysts [120].Co3O4/meso-CeO2 catalysts with Co3O4 content of 10% or higher were very active and selective for preferential oxidation of CO in H2-rich gases.The catalysts exhibited wide temperature windows for 100% CO conversion and stability is also very high.However, negative effects were observed when CO2 or H2O was added to the reaction mixture [121].
The catalytic activity and the selectivity of the CO oxidation of the CuO-CeO2/γ-Al2O3 catalyst in the selective CO oxidation in excess hydrogen were significantly improved by the addition of a small amount of Co.It was found that the temperature window of CO conversion >99.9% within 210-224 0 C [122,123].In recent work Woods et al. [8] prepared a highly active CoOx/CeO2 nano-particle catalyst with high surface area (78 m 2 /g).They claimed that the 10% CoOx/CeO2 catalyst was able to achieve near 100% CO conversion under a wide range of conditions.This catalyst was stable with time-on-stream at the temperature of highest CO conversion.H2 concentration seems to have a negative effect on the CO oxidation.They observed three distinct temperatures regions of catalyst activity occur.Below 175 0 C CO oxidation is dominant.Between 175 and 275 0 C, CO oxidation competes with H2 combustion.Above 275 0 C, methanation dominates.

Precious metal vs base metal catalysts
Several authors [95,[124][125][126] compared the performance of base metal catalysts with precious metal catalysts for the CO-PROX.Marino et al [95] reported that ceria-zirconia-supported copper catalysts appeared to be as active as the costly platinum group catalysts classically used for this reaction.A comparative study between ceriasupported gold and copper oxide catalysts for preferential CO oxidation reaction was carried out by Avgouropoulos et al. [124] both catalysts were prepared by deposition-precipitation method.Au/ ceria catalysts showed higher activity than CuO/ ceria for the PROX reaction at temperatures lower than 120 0 C, while the CuO/ceria catalysts were able to operate at higher temperatures, with a Bulletin of Chemical Reaction Engineering & Catalysis, 6 (1), 2011, 8 remarkably better selectivity.The presence of CO2 and H2O caused a significant decrease in the catalytic performance of the gold catalyst, while the CuO/ceria catalyst could still achieve complete removal of CO in the presence of CO2 and H2O.Chen et al. [125] worked on CexSn1-xO2-Al2O3 mixed oxides catalysts prepared by the suspension/ co-precipitation method and found that its activity was comparable with, and its selectivity was much larger than, that of the noble catalyst 5% Pt/Al2O3.[8] This, Pt-Ni/γ-Al2O3 catalyst showed the best performance even in the presence of 2 vol % H2O and 20 vol% CO2.The conflicting conclusions regarding performance of precious metal Vs base metal catalysts for CO-PROX by various authors may be due to different experimental conditions followed.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Flow diagram of hydrogen purification by CO-PROX

Table 2 .
1. Recent literature review at a glance on PROX of CO in H2 rich gases

Table 2 .
1 provides a list of representative recent literature survey at a glance on CO-PROX in H2 rich gases.

Table 2 .
1. (continued)are also used.The presence of CO2 and H2O in feed stream reduces the activity of noble metal and gold catalysts.Au/ceria catalysts are significantly more active, while CuO/ceria ones are remarkably more selective.CuO-CeO2 modified with Zr and Sn shows better results than Pt supported noble metal catalysts.Thus CuO-CeO2 based catalysts gives most appropriate result for CO-PROX, these are the cheaper than other classes of the catalysts and easily available hence it also reduces the cost of PEMFC.The catalytic properties are strongly affected by the synthesis procedures of the base metal catalysts.Reported ranking order of the preparation methods of the CuO-CeO2 catalyst in CO oxidation activity is as follows: urea-nitrates combustion > citrate-hydrothermal > coprecipitation > impregnation method.