Highly efficient catalytic hydrogenation of p-chloronitrobenzene: the synergistic effect and hybrid nano-structure

Abstract

Noble metal catalysts have attracted worldwide attention for catalytic selective hydrogenation due to their high activity. However, constructing highly effective, selective, and stable noble metal catalysts remains challenging. Herein, zirconium/zeolite supported platinum catalysts have been prepared. These hybrid nano-structured Pt/ZrO₂/ZSM-5 and Pt/ZrO₂/MCM-22 catalysts (denoted as Pt/ZZ and Pt/ZM) exhibited superior catalytic performance for the selective hydrogenation of p-chloronitrobenzene (p-CNB), which was much higher than that of Pt/ZrO₂, Pt/ZSM-5, and Pt/MCM-22, demonstrating the synergistic effect in these hybrid nano-structured catalysts. Especially, the turnover frequency (TOF) of Pt/ZM was as high as 8525 h⁻¹, surpassing that of most reported noble metal and novel non-noble metal catalysts, and the catalyst can be recycled for six runs without any obvious decrease in activity and selectivity. The characterization indicated that the electron transfer from Pt to ZrO₂ can greatly facilitate the performance of p-CNB hydrogenation through modulating the electronic structure and surface structure. This work provides an effective strategy for the design of noble metal catalysts with high activity and selectivity.