Structured silica reactor with aligned carbon nanotubes as catalyst support for liquid-phase reaction

Scaling up and macronization of carbone nanomaterials open a new era for their industrial applications. Here we report the synthesis of aligned and strongly attached multi-walled carbon nanotubes on the wall of a silica reactor, which can be efficiently used as a catalyst support in liquid-phase reactions. The electronic microscopy (SEM and MEB) analysis techniques were used to characterize the morphology and the microstructure of the as-synthesized catalyst support. The probe reaction used was the liquid-phase hydrogenation of a C=C bond using palladium as an active phase. The great advantage of using such a structured reactor was the avoidance of catalyst-product separation which is generally encountered with liquid-phase reactions and the high reactant-active phase contact surface due to the nanoscopic size of the support. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.