Role of Different Active Sites in Heterogeneous Alkene Hydrogenation on Platinum Catalysts Revealed by Means of Parahydrogen-Induced Polarization

Abstract

Substantial NMR signal enhancements provided by parahydrogen-induced polarization (PHIP) are associated with the ability of a catalyst to incorporate both H atoms of a dihydrogen molecule into the same product molecule. Therefore, PHIP can provide valuable information about the mechanisms and kinetics of catalytic hydrogenation reactions as well as produce hyperpolarized molecules for sensitivity enhancement in NMR. In this work, the PHIP technique was applied to study the structure sensitivity and the support effects on the degree of pairwise H2 addition in propene hydrogenation over supported platinum catalysts. Four series of Pt catalysts supported on Al2O3, SiO2, ZrO2, and TiO2 were examined. A nontrivial dependence of the selectivity toward pairwise H2 addition on the Pt particle size was found. Its analysis indicates that at least three types of different active sites coexist on the catalysts surface. Among them, the major one is responsible for the nonpairwise H2 addition to the double bond, wherea...