Carbon Monoxide (CO) poisoning, a major cause of deaths in fire related accidents, accounts for more than 3000 deaths and 10000 injuries every year. Adequate adsorption of CO is not possible at ambient temperature; further CO has a very low solubility in various solvents. Hence catalytic oxidation of CO to CO2 is preferred CO removal technique at ambient temperature. Currently Hopcalite (Mixture of MnO and CuO) is used as a CO oxidation catalyst. Hopcalite becomes inactive in presence of moisture.

A novel catalyst has been developed for ambient temperature CO oxidation in the presence of moisture. This novel catalyst comprises a precious metal, a metal oxide on an inert catalyst support such as silica or alumina. The catalyst is prepared by incipient wetness impregnation. The catalyst yielded a steady CO conversion (>99%) in the presence of moisture (RH 50-90%) for more than 8 hours at ambient temperature (23C). The catalyst was evaluated at various face velocities, CO challenge concentrations at ambient temperature with RH of 50-90%. The catalyst demonstrated an extremely high activity for CO oxidation. In a thin bed test, a challenge gas (RH 50%) containing 2500 ppmv CO was passed through a packed bed of the catalyst particles (150 µm) with a bed thickness of 5 mm at a gas face velocity of 10 cm/s. The catalyst successfully reduced the CO concentration to below 10 ppmv for 1 hour without any deactivation.

The performance of microfibrous entrapped catalyst is also studied. A packed bed made of metal fiber entrapped catalyst significantly improved CO oxidation performance. Microfibrous entrapment substantially reduced the bed thickness and pressure drop over the bed, for achieving the same CO conversion. Therefore, this novel catalyst composition entrapped in a microfibrous media can effectively be used in a fire escape mask to provide the wearer protection against CO resulting from fire or explosions.