Vanadia Catalysts Supported on Carbon Nitride for Selective Oxidation of Benzyl Alcohol Under Atmospheric Oxygen.

Selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol under atmospheric oxygen is a sustainable route for the synthesis of benzaldehyde. The development of low-cost metal catalysts is a challenging research topic. Herein, supported vanadia catalysts on carbon nitride were prepared using vanadyl acetylacetonate as a precursor through a wet-impregnation method. The synthesized VO/eg-C3N4 were characterized by N2 adsorption–desorption, TG, XRD, FT-IR, XPS, UV–Vis, SEM, and O2-TPD. The eg-C3N4 material could disperse the vanadia species, and the distributions of vanadium cations (V5+/V4+) were largely dependent on the preparation temperature. In the selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol under atmospheric oxygen, the catalysts showed moderate catalytic activity. Under identical reaction conditions, the activity of VO/eg-C3N4 was higher than vanadia catalysts supported on SBA-15 and CNTs materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]