The hydrogenation reaction of carbonyl-containing aromatic organics is one of the most important reactions in the refinement industry. It is challenging to control the selectivity of hydrogenation reactions as both the aromatic groups and the carbonyl groups could be reduced to form the corresponding product. It is vital to control the reaction so that the hydrogenation reaction only happens to one of the functional groups to produce the desired product. Recently, we have developed a new catalyst, in which we used α-zirconium phosphate (α-ZrP) nanoplatelet as the support and ruthenium nano-anadem structure as the catalyst. The two-dimensional α-ZrP nanoplatelets were prepared using a modified reflux method to control the particle size. Ruthenium nanoparticles were deposited on the edge of ZrP through two steps, ion exchange, and reduction. The synthesized Ru-ZrP composites were characterized by a series of techniques, e.g., PXRD, SEM, TEM, EDS, XPS, FT-IR. We have selected the simplest aromatic ketone as the starting point. The catalytic hydrogenation of acetophenone realized full conversion at room temperature, and the selectivity of 1-cyclohexylehtanol was more than 95%. We have also studied the reaction mechanism extensively. The results show that there are two possible reaction pathways in the hydrogenation reaction of acetophenone. Computational studies were also conducted to help us understand the reaction mechanisms.

Selective hydrogenation reaction of aromatic ketone catalyszed by ZrP-supported anadem metal catalysts

ACS Spring 2022

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