A Tuneable Bifunctional Water-Compatible Heterogeneous Catalyst for the Selective Aqueous Hydrogenation of Phenols

A water-tolerant bifunctional heterogeneous catalyst is able to effectively catalyse the selective hydrogenation of phenol to cyclohexanone in water at atmospheric pressure and room temperature with > 99.9% selectivity to cyclohexanone at phenol conversions > 99.9%. The catalyst was found to be highly active and reusable, giving identical activities and selectivities after > 5 uses. Moreover, this reported simple bifunctional catalyst is also able to hydrogenate a range of substituted phenols in high yields under the investigated aqueous conditions.