Heteropoly Acids Supported on Sol-Gel Matrices and Their Catalytic Activity and Selectivity

摘要

Heteropoly acids (HPA) are well known solid acids as well as oxidation catalysts. They find application in both homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions. As catalysts, problems associated with surface area and instability are diminished by supporting the HPA. It has been reported that supporting these materials or oxide substrates or porous carbon materials has resulted in some degree of instability. It has also been shown that encapsulating HPA in sol-gel silica matrices has produced an increase in catalytic performance without compromising the catalytic activity of the HPA. In this work, we analyzed the activity of a silica sol-gel supported HPA catalyst. The reaction which was chosen to illustrate such issues was the oxidation/dehydration of l-butanol. In addition, the specific role of the support in the catalytic process is described. In this work, we characterized the silica-sol gel supported HPA catalyst to try to understand the effect of preparation in the overall catalytic selectivity and activity.