Pt AlOOH/C Catalyst for Highly Efficient and Selective Hydrogenation of Nitroarenes

Abstract Aromatic amines as important intermediates for chemical production have important applications in chemical industry such as plastics, rubber processing, herbicides, dyes, and pharmaceuticals. Catalytic hydrogenation of nitroarenes is the main synthetic method for producing aromatic amines. This work designs and synthesizes a highly efficient and selective catalytic hydrogenation catalyst (Pt‐AlOOH/C) using hydrothermal and impregnation methods. The Pt‐AlOOH/C catalysts with different loadings (1.0, 0.1, and 0.05 wt%) are successfully obtained by changing the amount of the Pt precursor. The results show that the 1%Pt‐AlOOH/C catalyst had the best performance, achieving 97.6% conversion of 4‐nitroacetophenone with 96.0% selectivity to p ‐aminophenone under the following reaction conditions of 0.5 h, 25 °C, and pressure 2.0 MPa. The selectivity of one ─NO 2 hydrogenation for Pt‐AlOOH/C also provides excellent catalytic activity and high selectivity to one ─NO 2 being hydrogenated for other nitroarenes (for example, 2‐chloronitrobenzene, 2‐bromonitrobenzene, p ‐nitrophenol, 1,3‐dinitrobenzene, and p ‐nitrobenzonitrile) hydrogenation reactions under quite mild reaction conditions. The characterization results show that the Pt nanoparticles with high dispersion are successfully and uniformly loaded on the AlOOH/C support.