Preparation of heterogeneous cationic metalloporphyrin/heteropolyanion composite catalysts and their high catalytic activity in hydroxylation of cyclohexane with molecular oxygen

Abstract

A new route to improve the metalloporphyrin catalysts is developed, and it is to constitute heterogeneous composite catalysts with immobilized cationic metalloporphyrins and heteropolyanions. By using the method of synchronously synthesizing and immobilizing porphyrins on cross-linked polystyrene microspheres (CPS microspheres), the immobilized porphyrin TAPP-CPS microspheres, on which ternary amine (TA) group-containing phenyl porphyrin (PP) was immobilized, were first prepared, and then the immobilized cationic porphyrin TMPP-CPS microspheres, in whose structure trimethylammoniophenyl porphyrin (TMPP) was contained, were obtained via quaternization reaction. Finally, three immobilized metalloporphyrins, CoTMPP-CPS (shorten as CoP-CPS), MnTMPP-CPS (MnP-CPS) and FeTMPP-CPS (FeP-CPS), were gained through coordination reactions. These immobilized metalloporphyrins were composited with heteropolyanions by right of the mutual electrostatic interaction with phosphotungstic (PW) acid and phosphomolybdic (PMo) acid as reagents, respectively, resulting in several heterogeneous metalloporphyrin/heteropolyanion composite catalysts such as CoPPW-CPS, CoPPMo-CPS and MnPPW-CPS. The composite catalysts were used in the catalytic hydroxylation reaction of cyclohexane with molecular oxygen as oxidant, and their catalytic performances were investigated. The experimental results show that the heterogeneous composite catalysts have extraordinarily high catalytic activity in the hydroxylation reaction of cyclohexane by molecular oxygen, and the cyclohexanol yield in 8 h can get up to 45.5 %. More importantly, the catalytic activity of the heterogeneous composite catalysts is obviously higher than that of the immobilized cationic metalloporphyrins, and the enhanced catalytic activity is originated from a protection of heteropolyanions against the deactivation of metalloporphyrins.