Promoting effects of thoria on the nickel-manganese mixed oxide catalysts for the aerobic oxidation of benzyl alcohol

Due to the recent advancement in the development of various characterization techniques, mixed metal oxide (MMO) based catalysts have gained tremendous attention in the field of catalysis. In this study, we demonstrated the synthesis of a series of novel MMO based catalysts by a facile co-precipitation method. The detailed structure and composition of thoria promoted NiMnO catalysts was investigated using various microscopic and spectroscopic techniques such as, SEM, EDAX, XRD, TGA, BET and TPR. In order to study the effect of the content of thorium oxide on the catalytic activity of the as-prepared material various samples were prepared by the addition of low quantities of thorium oxide with 1%, 3% and 5% on NiMnO. The catalytic performances of the as-prepared catalysts were evaluated towards the aerobic oxidation of benzyl alcohol using molecular oxygen as oxidant. Furthermore, in order to investigate the effect of the calcination temperatures on the catalytic activities of the as-prepared materials, the samples were calcined at three different temperatures at 300 °C, 400 °C and 500 °C. The catalysts displayed significant enhancement in catalytic activity towards the catalytic conversion of benzyl alcohol (C6H5CH2OH) to benzaldehyde (C6H5CHO). Detailed kinetic studies of the reactions using gas chromatography have revealed that the variation of calcination temperature and the percentage of thoria had significant effect on the catalytic performances of the materials. Among all synthesized catalysts ThO2-(5%)-NiMnO catalyst calcined at 400 °C exhibited the highest catalytic performance and stability for the selective oxidation of alcohols.