Oxidative dehydrogenation on nanocarbon: Polydopamine hollow nanospheres as novel highly efficient catalysts

Ethylbenzene oxidative dehydrogenation (EB ODH) reactions with nanocarbon as catalysts exhibit promising prospects as green and sustainable chemical industrial process. The present work reported the design and synthesis of polydopamine hollow nanospheres (PDA HNSs) carbon-based catalysts via a polymerization & carbonization method using silica as hard templates. The proposed PDA HNSs catalysts exhibit a high surface area of 641.6 m(2) g(-1) with the surface oxygen and nitrogen content up to 6.3% and 9.5%, respectively. It shows exceptional catalytic performance towards EB ODH reaction, which is even better than the commercial nanocarbon materials, such as carbon nanotubes, from the viewpoint of the apparent activity (EB conversion at 61.6%), the intrinsic activity (7.7 x 10(-4) s(-1)) and the activation energy (42.5 kJ/mol), although they share the same catalytic active sites of ketonic carbonyl/quinone groups and reaction kinetics, such as rate determining step and reaction orders.

Automated summary

Polydopamine hollow nanospheres as catalysts for ethylbenzene oxidative dehydrogenation exhibit exceptional catalytic performance, outperforming commercial nanocarbon materials, with high surface area and oxygen and nitrogen content, showing potential in green and sustainable chemical industrial processes.