Preparation and characterization of perlite/V2O5 nano-spheres via a novel green method: Applied for oxidation of benzyl alcohol derivatives

Abstract

Supported diverse vanadium oxides catalysts with other expensive chemical reagents have been introduce high chemo-efficiency for a wide ambit of organic reactions such as hydrogenation or alcohol oxidation. Diminishing the use of such costly functionalized vanadium catalysts is currently one of the considerable topics in materials synthesizing. Herein, a new green method to prepare the V2O5-immobilized perlite nanocomposite (perlite/V2O5 NC) with sphere-shaped morphology in ethylene glycol under thermal conditions was described. Greenness of these processes was completely instituted, as perlite was used both as an ecofriendly and inexpensive material as well as an excellent surface for the growth of the nano-sphere of V2O5, due to electrostatic interactions between vanadium ions and the activated functional groups of alumina and silanol. Then, the application of desired product in the aerobic oxidation reactions of benzyl alcohol derivatives is precisely investigated. Under the optimized reaction conditions (1 mmol of H2O2, 0.02 of perlite/V2O5 NC, and 2.0 mL of acetonitrile) at 82 °C for 5 min, a major range of primary benzylic alcohols and their derivatives were efficiently converted to aldehydes with good yields (90%). All the structural analyses have carried out by using of X-ray diffraction powder (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) with scanning electron microscopy for elemental mapping (SEM-EDS) images, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) analysis and X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRF) and the obtained results have been carefully interpreted. Nitrogen sorption experiment has validated the formation of sphere-shaped with moderate Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method and the pore sizes of this nanocomposite has determined by (Barrett, Joyner, and Halenda(BJH method, as well. Reusability and stability of the perlite/V2O5 NC were verified by XRD, SEM images, EDS coupled with SEM-mapping images, FT-IR and (ICP-AS) analysis. Moreover, a plausible mechanism for facilitated oxidation of benzyl alcohols by perlite/V2O5 NC was suggested in this study.