Low-temperature and highly efficient liquid-phase catalytic nitration of chlorobenzene with NO2: Remarkably improving the para-selectivity in O2-Ac2O-Hβ composite system

Abstract

In this work, we developed a low-temperature and efficient approach for the highly selective preparation of valuable p-nitrochlorobenzene from the liquid-phase catalytic nitration of chlorobenzene with NO2 in O2-Ac2O-Hβ composite system. The results demonstrated that the introduction of molecular oxygen remarkably enhanced the chlorobenzene conversion and the cooperation catalysis of Hβ zeolite and Ac2O envidently improved the selectivity to para-nitro product. Under the optimized reaction conditions, 93.6 % of the selectivity to p-nitrochlorobenzene with 84.0 % of chlorobenzene conversion was obtained, and the ratio of p-nitrochlorobenzene to o-nitrochlorobenzene could reach up to 20.3. Furthermore, the selectivity distribution of nitration products was reasonably explained by the density functional theory (DFT) calculation. Finally, the possible nitration reaction pathway of chlorobenzene with NO2 was suggested in O2-Ac2O-Hβ composite catalytic system. The present work affords a new and mild nitration approach for highly selective preparation of valuable para-nitro products, and has potential industrial application prospects.