Effects of strontium and copper substitution on the catalytic performance of LaCoO3 in the combustion of methane: an optimization study

Cobalt-based perovskites containing strontium and copper (La1-xSrxCo1-yCuyO3) were synthesized by the sol-gel method and characterized by XRD, H2-TPR, N2-adsorbtion, XRF and XPS techniques. The XRD results showed that the rhombohedral structure of perovskites was obtained. The activation energy employed to analyze the activities of samples in the combustion of methane was optimized using full factorial design (FD) by considering strontium (x=0, 0.1 and 0.2) and copper (y=0, 0.25 and 0.5) as the input variables. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed to investigate the obtained data and a p