A refined design concept for sulfur-tolerant Pd catalyst supported on zeolite by shape-selective exclusion and hydrogen spillover for hydrogenation of aromatics

Sulfur poisoning of noble metal catalysts has been a major challenge for decades. This work demonstrates the superior sulfur tolerance of a hybrid zeolite-supported Pd catalyst for hydrogenation of tetralin containing benzothiophene. The hybrid catalyst consists of Pd supported on a large-pore acidic zeolite Y (Pd/HY) and a small-pore zeolite A without (Pd/HA) or with surface metal passivation by chemical vapor deposition of SiO2 (SiO2-Pd/HA) and with potassium ion exchange (SiO2-Pd/KA). Pd/HY is very active for tetralin hydrogenation but quickly deactivates after exposure to benzothiophene at high concentration of 100 ppm sulfur. The SiO2-coated Pd/HA shows no activity for tetralin hydrogenation, but continues to activate H2 and serve as a source of hydrogen spillover from Pd/HA since these metal sites are protected from thiophenic sulfur due to size-selective exclusion. Adding K ion-exchanged and SiO2-coated catalyst SiO2 -Pd/KA to Pd/HY is even more effective for enhancing sulfur tolerance, both for tetralin hydrogenation and for isomerization of cis-decalin to trans-decalin in the presence of benzothiophene. The turnover frequencies (TOF) of all the catalysts are similar at the exposed sulfur/Pd atomic ratio of around 0.5. With further increase in sulfur/Pd ratio, rapid decline in TOF was observed on Pd/HY, but SiO2-Pd/KA + Pd/HY hybrid catalyst shows a significantly higher TOF than that over Pd/HY, even though SiO2-Pd/KA or SiO2-Pd/HA alone shows no TOF for tetralin hydrogenation. Even after high-dose poisoning at 400 ppm sulfur, the SiO2-Pd/KA + Pd/HY hybrid recovered activity more quickly than SiO2-Pd/HA + Pd/HY, while the latter in turn is much better than Pd/HY alone. These results point to the higher activity for hydrogen spillover from SiO2-Pd/KA where Pd metal sites are protected from not only thiophenic sulfur but also inorganic sulfur H2S by shape-selective exclusion. The present work further establishes the validity of shape-selective exclusion and hydrogen spillover in the design concept proposed for a sulfur-tolerant bimodal acidic zeolite-supported metal catalyst for hydrogenation of naphthalene [C.S. Song, Chemtech, 29 (1999) 26–30], and refines the design concept further for limiting the size of small pore in hybrid catalysts to ∼ 3 A for restricting access of H2S but allowing entrance of H2. This refined design concept is applicable to other supported monometallic and bimetallic catalysts.