An oxygen-assisted conversion of butanol to value-added products on nanocarbon catalysts: tuning product selectivity via nitrogen doping

Abstract

The dehydrogenation of n-butanol (nB) to butyraldehyde and the dehydration to butene are important high value-added industrial processes for the refinery of biomass resources. The present work reported the activity and mechanistic and kinetic analysis of nB conversion on nitrogen-doped carbon nanotube (NCNT) catalysts. NCNT catalysts exhibited an nB conversion of 22% with 73% ODH product selectivity under gentle reaction conditions, which was over 15 times higher than the undoped carbon nanotube. The high ODH activity of NCNT may stem from the donated electrons from nitrogen to ketonic carbonyl groups, which was testified by XPS. In addition, the basic reaction kinetics and mechanism analysis, such as reaction orders, apparent activation energy, and rate determining step for the oxidative dehydrogenation and dehydration of nB were studied systematically, which provided an in-depth understanding of the mechanism and structure–function relations in nitrogen-doped nanocarbon catalyzed redox reactions.