Probing bifunctional nature of aluminium promoted vanadium phosphate: a versatile catalyst for oxidation and esterification

摘要

The present investigation deals with the catalytic potential of Al-promoted vanadium phosphate (Al-VPO) materials, where in it has been found that Al-VPO has unique bifunctional properties towards versatile organic reactions such as oxidation of methanol and esterification. Besides the industrial application of VPO towards n-butane oxidation to maleic anhydride, the vanadium phosphate material showed promising results in alcohol oxidation and esterification. The synthesized aluminium promoted VPO catalyst has been proven to be successful for acid catalysed reaction as well as oxidation reactions especially giving 100 % selectivity to formaldehyde and 90 % to ester. The conversion can be enhanced to 94 % with the sacrifice of the selectivity in case of alcohol oxidation.