UC Santa Cruz

Nitric oxide (NO) may cause serious environmental problems, such as acid rain, haze weather, global warming and even death. Herein, a new low-cost, highly efficient and green method for the elimination of NO using zirconium nitride (ZrN) is reported for the first time, which does not produce any waste or any by-product. Relevant experimental parameters, such as reaction temperature and gas concentration, were investigated to explore the reaction mechanism. Interestingly, NO can be easily decomposed into nitrogen (N₂) by ZrN powders at 600°C with ZrN simultaneously transformed into zirconium dioxide (ZrO₂) gradually. The time for the complete conversion of NO into N₂ was approximately 14 h over 0.5 g of ZrN at a NO concentration of 500 ppm. This green elimination process of NO demonstrated good atom economy and practical significance in mitigating environmental problems.