Nanostructured of Vanadium Phosphorus Oxide (Vpo) Catalyst Prepared by Sonochemical Treatment

A series of six nanostructures vanadium phosphorus oxide catalysts were synthesized through the starting material vanadium pentoxide which subjected to high intensity ultrasound irradiation with different duration of time. XRD patterns of all nanostructure vanadium phosphorus oxide catalyst were indexed to (VO)2P2O7 with one additional small peak which corresponds to the present of small amount of V5+ phase except for the catalyst that undergo 120 min of ultrasound irradiation time. The surface morphologies of the catalysts are uniform, well defined shapes and surface structures in nanoscale range but tend to agglomerate with each other to form larger particles. Furthermore, high amount of active oxygen species were released from V4+ phase (O--V4+ pair) for the nanostructures VPO catalyst which were synthesized with 30 min of ultrasound irradiation time and drastic increment in n-butane conversion (9 %) in catalytic evaluation test, suggested that these nanostructure VPO is an active catalyst for partial oxidation of n-butane towards malefic anhydride.