Highly dispersed metal incorporated hexagonal Mesoporous silicates for catalytic Cyclohexanone oxidation to Adipic acid

Abstract Adipic acid is a dicarboxylic acid of great industrial importance, mainly used in the production of nylon-6,6 and polyurethane. The use of nitric acid as an oxidant in the industrial production of adipic acid poses significant carbon footprint to the environment. Clean adipic acid synthesis methods using a heterogeneous catalyst with H2O2 as oxidant and water as solvent, have potential advantages of low catalyst cost, easy synthesis and recovery, cleanness and environmental protection. In this work, hexagonal mesoporous silicates materials were synthesized by a sol–gel method and evaluated for cyclohexanol/cyclohexanone oxidation to adipic acid. The physical and chemical properties of Fe-HMS were characterized by XRD, HR-TEM, BET and UV–Vis. The experimental results showed that Fe-HMS materials show pore sizes ranging in 2–3 nm. W- and Mo-based polyoxometalates were also evaluated and compared to the Fe-based HMS catalysts. To improve the adipic acid yield, the influence of the transition metal, as well as the effect of metal loading, reaction temperature and catalyst amount on the catalytic performances of Fe-HMS have been investigated in details. When Si/Fe atomic ratio = 100, Fe-HMS catalyst shows highest activity, with a cyclohexanone conversion of 92.3% and adipic acid selectivity of 29.4%. The reaction pathway of cyclohexanone oxidation was further proposed based on experimental data.