Aerobic Catalytic Oxidation of Cyclohexene over TiZrCo Catalysts

The aerobic oxidation of hydrocarbon is of great significance from the viewpoints of both fundamental and industry studies as it can transfer the petrochemical feedstock into valuable chemicals. In this work, we investigated the aerobic oxidation of cyclohexene over TiZrCo catalysts, in which 2-cyclohexen-1-one was produced with a high selectivity of 57.6% at a conversion of 92.2%, which are comparable to the best results reported for the aerobic oxidation of cyclohexene over heterogeneous catalysts. The influences of kinds of solvent, substrate concentration and reaction temperature were evaluated. Moreover, the catalytic performance of the TiZrCo catalyst and the main catalytic active species were also discussed. The results of SEM, XRD and XPS suggested that the surface CoO and Co3O4 species are the catalytic active species and contribute to the high activity and selectivity in the present cyclohexene oxidation. The present catalytic system should have wide applications in the aerobic oxidation of hydrocarbons.