Dehydrogenative Coupling of Alkanes and Benzene Enhanced by Slurry-Phase Interparticle Hydrogen Transfer

Moe Takabatake; Ayako Hashimoto; Wang-Jae Chun; Masayuki Nambo; Yuichi Manaka; Ken Motokura

doi:10.1021/jacsau.0c00070

Dehydrogenative Coupling of Alkanes and Benzene Enhanced by Slurry-Phase Interparticle Hydrogen Transfer

JACS Au. 2021 Jan 20;1(2):124-129. doi: 10.1021/jacsau.0c00070. eCollection 2021 Feb 22.

Authors

Moe Takabatake¹, Ayako Hashimoto^{2

3}, Wang-Jae Chun⁴, Masayuki Nambo¹, Yuichi Manaka^{1

5}, Ken Motokura^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Science and Engineering, School of Materials and Chemical Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama 226-8502, Japan.
² In-situ Characterization Technique Development Group, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba 305-0047, Japan.
³ PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Saitama 332-0012, Japan.
⁴ Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, International Christian University, Tokyo 181-8585, Japan.
⁵ Renewable Energy Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Fukushima 963-0298, Japan.

Abstract

The dehydrogenative coupling reaction of alkanes and benzene has attracted attention as a method of direct conversion of alkanes to raw materials for useful chemical products. Here, we report the first combined catalyst system composed of hydrotalcite-supported palladium and solid acid aluminum-exchanged montmorillonite for the direct alkylation of benzene promoted by slurry-phase interparticle hydrogen transfer at 150 °C. The combination of the two catalytic particles showed excellent activity and achieved the maximum benzene conversion of 21% and target product selectivity of 84% in the reaction of n-heptane and benzene. Our results, thus, provide a feasible strategy to design efficient liquid-phase reaction systems employing simple physical mixing of two catalytic particles.