Sulfur and nitrogen-doped porous cobalt carbon catalyst for high efficient aerobic oxidation of hydrocarbons

Abstract

The selective oxidation of hydrocarbons to corresponding ketones under green reaction conditions is of more and more important in chemical processes due to environmental and economic pressure. In this respect, we successfully prepared high efficient sulfur and nitrogen-doped porous cobalt carbon catalyst through a simple but efficient one-pot method. Potassium thiocyanate (KSCN) is using as sulfur source and complexing agent, what’s more, KSCN also acts as pore-forming agent to create larger specific surface area. In addition, the as-obtained catalyst shows high catalytic performance for oxidation of hydrocarbons under solvent-free and oxygen as oxidant conditions, especially for ethylbenzene, the conversion is up to 82% with 88% of selectivity for acetophenone, which is an exciting result due to the relative low activity of oxygen in comparison with tert-butyl hydroperoxide as oxidant. This is due to structure defect and Co4S3 by the doping of KSCN in CoNC catalysts, which may result in the improvement of the catalytic performance of the catalysts.