Tandem catalytic methylation of naphthalene using CO2 and H2

Zijian Wang; Haohao Chang; Jiang Zhang; Zehui Sun; Yulin Wu; Yongmei Liu; Yifeng Zhu; Heyong He; Yong Cao; Xinhe Bao

doi:10.1039/d2cc00190j

Tandem catalytic methylation of naphthalene using CO₂ and H₂

Chem Commun (Camb). 2022 Mar 18;58(23):3779-3782. doi: 10.1039/d2cc00190j.

Authors

Zijian Wang¹, Haohao Chang¹, Jiang Zhang¹, Zehui Sun¹, Yulin Wu¹, Yongmei Liu¹, Yifeng Zhu¹, Heyong He¹, Yong Cao¹, Xinhe Bao²

Affiliations

¹ Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Department of Chemistry, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China. yongcao@fudan.edu.cn.
² State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, National Laboratory for Clean Energy, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, Liaoning, China. xhbao@dicp.ac.cn.

PMID: 35229864
DOI: 10.1039/d2cc00190j

Abstract

We report here the direct methylation of naphthalene using CO₂ and H₂, which is distinctly more effective than the counterpart methylation with methanol. Benefiting from well-balanced specific rates for CO₂-to-methanol conversion over ZnZrO_x and the subsequent methylation over H-Beta, significantly enhanced selectivity (93.7%) to monomethylnaphthalenes was achieved.