Mechanism of Dehydrocyclization of 1-Hexene to Benzene on Cu3Pt(111)

Abstract

Even though dehydrocyclization is widely practiced in heterogeneous catalysis for the conversion of straight chain hydrocarbons into aromatic compounds, knowledge of the mechanism of this process remains limited, largely because it has not previously been possible to carry out the reaction under conditions amenable to detailed mechanistic studies. We report here ultrahigh vacuum studies of the dehydrocyclization of submonolayer coverages of 1-hexene to benzene on a Cu3Pt(111) single-crystal surface. On the basis of temperature-programmed reaction/desorption (TPR/D) studies of dehydrocyclization of 1-hexene as compared to the reactions of cyclohexene, 1,3-cyclohexadiene, 1,4-cyclohexadiene, benzene, 1,3-hexadiene, and 1,3,5-hexatriene with a Cu3Pt(111) surface, it is found that a rate-determining step in the overall reaction is cyclization. The obtained results show that at low coverages of mono- and bi-unsaturated cyclic compounds, benzene is the only gas-phase hydrocarbon product of reaction of these com...