Hydrogen, adsorption, platinum metal reduction

A variety of catalysts including copper, nickel, cobalt, and the platinum metals group have been used successfully in carbonyl reduction. Palladium, an excellent catalyst for hydrogenation of aromatic carbonyls is relatively ineffective for aliphatic carbonyls this latter group has a low strength of adsorption on palladium relative to other metals (72,91). Nonetheless, palladium can be used very well with aliphatic carbonyls with sufficient patience, as illustrated by the difficult-to-reduce vinylogous amide I to 2 (9). 

Supported platinum catalysts were prepared at room temperature by the adsorption of metal precursors followed by the reduction with sodium tetrahydroborate solution. It was shown that the alumina-supported catalysts so prepared were not only highly active for liquid-phase hydrogenation of cinnamaldehyde but also highly selective for the formation of cinnamyl alcohol at atmospheric pressure of hydrogen and 308 K. The prepared catalysts seemed to be different in the state of dispersion of platinum particles as compared to those prepared by usual hydrogen reduction at 773 K. 

The present work was undertaken to examine this possibility by trying a new method of low-temperature catalyst preparation. The method studied involves the adsorption of metal precursors on supports and the reduction by sodium tetrahydroborate solution for the preparation of supported platinum catalysts. The adsorption and reduction of platinum precursors are carried out at room temperature and the highest temperature during the preparation is 390 K for the removal of solvent. The activities of the catalysts prepared were examined for liquid-phase hydrogenation of cinnamaldehyde under mild conditions. Our attention was directed to not only total activity but also selectivity to cinnamyl alcohol, since it is difficult for platinum to hydrogenate the C=0 bond of this a, -unsaturated aldehyde compared to the C=C bond [2]. We examined the dependence of the catalytic activity and selectivity on preparation variables including metal precursor species, support materials and reduction conditions. In addition, the prepared catalysts were characterized by several techniques to clarify their catalytic features. The activity of the alumina-supported platinum catalyst prepared by the present method was briefly reported in a recent communication [3]. 

Other metals on silica supports have been investigated less extensively than platinum and nickel, and average particle diameters have only been estimated by gas adsorption methods, supported in a few cases by X-ray line broadening data. Thus, rhodium, iridium, osmium, and ruthenium (44, 45) and palladium (46) have all been prepared with average metal particle diameters <40 A or so, after hydrogen reduction at 400°-500°C. 

A systematic attempt to correlate the catalytic effect of different surfaces with their adsorptive capacity was made by Taylor and his collaborators. Taylor and Burns, for example, investigated the adsorption of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and ethylene by the six metals nickel, cobalt, palladium, platinum, iron, and copper. All these metals are able to catalyse the hydrogenation of ethylene to ethane, while nickel, cobalt, and palladium also catalyse the reduction of carbon monoxide and of carbon dioxide to methane. 

Reduction by hydrogen produces water as reported previously. The increase of CO frequency from 2100 to 2105 cm 1 when water is desorbed at 200°C under vacuum prior to the CO adsorption shows that water is probably coordinately bonded to palladium atoms and slightly increases the electronic density of the metal, as expected for Lewis bases. We observed the same effect on supported platinum (22). 

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