Please donot adjust the margins
convenient as raw material for the production of ethylene glycol by hydrogenation [7,8]. Thus, more and more attention has been paid
on diethyl oxalate, especially on its synthesis.
Oxalic esters have been typically synthesized by esterify-cation of oxalic acid and alcohols. In 1960s, the method of CO oxidative
coupling to oxalic esters was discovered by Fenton et al. [9], which was initially carried out in the liquid phase by using copper-based
catalysts. Further, UBE Industries and Montedison Ltd. have successively developed a new process for the synthesis of oxalate ester in
the gas phase [10]. In recent years, plenty of research was related to the oxidative coupling of CO to oxalate ester and carbonic ester
including the selection of the supports, the preparation of the catalyst, the doping of the metal auxiliaries and the reaction mechanism
[11-15]. Many studies believed that Pd/α-Al2O3 had the best catalytic performance for diethyl oxalate production, but the favorable
distribution of active components on the catalysts haven’t worked out. Although some studies indicated that the catalytic activity of the
egg-shell type distribution of the active sites was better than that of the aggregated particles [16,17], the high dispersion of the active
component Pd on the supports has not been resolved effectively. In addition, for the supported noble metal catalysts, it is of great
significance to decrease the active loading, especially for the potential industrial application. In order to further improve the catalytic
activity and decrease the loading of Pd from the point view of industrialization, there is a pressing need to prepare highly active Pd/α-
Al2O3 catalyst with lower Pd loadings and higher Pd dispersion.
Here, we report the Pd-Fe/α-Al2O3 catalyst with an ultra-low Pd loading synthesized by introducing bayberry tannin as chelating
promoter and commercial hollow column Raschig ring α-Al2O3 as support for the synthesis of diethyl oxalate from CO and ethyl nitrite.
The catalytic activity for diethyl oxalate production over Pd-Fe/α-Al2O3 catalyst was evaluated in a continuous flow, fixed-bed reactor
with the loading amount of 10 ml catalysts. The effect of bayberry tannin on the Pd dispersion and catalytic performance of Pd-Fe/α-
Al2O3 for diethyl oxalate production was investigated.
Two Pd-Fe/α-Al2O3 catalysts (denoted as C1 and C2) have been synthesized with commercial hollow column Raschig ring α-Al2O3
as support under the same conditions except that the catalyst C1 was obtained upon the addition of bayberry tannin as chelating promoter
(see Supporting information for details). Catalytic test in the CO oxidative coupling to DEO was carried out in a continuous flow fixed-
bed reactor with ethyl nitrite generating device (loading 10 mL Pd-Fe/α-Al2O3 catalyst). The catalytic performances of C1 and C2 were
presented in Table 1. It is demonstrated that conversion of CO and the space-time yield (STY) of DEO of C1 was nearly twice that of
C2. The selectivity to DEO for C1 and C2 were almost identical, but they increased greatly compared with previous study (89%) [16].
In addition, as shown in Table 1, for the C1 and C2, the theoretical Pd and Fe loading was 0.50 wt.% while the actual Pd loading of C1
and C2 were 0.35 and 0.11 wt.%, and the actual Fe loading of C1 and C2 were both 0.29 wt.%, as shown in Table 1. The value of Fe: Pd
of catalysts were about 1.2:1 and 1:2.6, determined by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES). It was
obvious that the bayberry tannin played a vital role in anchoring Pd on the support during the preparation process.
Table 1 CO oxidative coupling to DEO on different catalysts a.
Catalysts
Pd content
Fe content
XCO
SDEO
STYDEO
(wt.%)
(wt.%)
(%)
(%)
(g·L-1·h-1)
C1b
C2c
0.35
0.11
0.29
0.29
33.6
16.5
95.5
96.0
729
424
a Reaction conditions: 10 mL of catalyst, 3000 h-1 of gas hourly space velocity (GHSV), reactants including 20 % CO, 16 % NO, 4 % O2, 60 % N2; 0.04 MPa,
130 ℃.
b C1 was prepared with the addition of bayberry tannin.
c C2 was prepared without the addition of bayberry tannin.
Fig. S2 (Supporting information) shows transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images of Pd nanoparticles in the impregnation
solutions with and without bayberry tannin addition. It is obvious that in the presence of bayberry tannin, Pd nanoparticles can be
uniformly dispersed (Fig. S2a), while Pd aggregated and grew in the absence of bayberry tannin, as shown in Fig. S2b. This is mainly
because a large number of phenolic hydroxyl groups in bayberry tannin could chelate with the Pd and anchor the Pd metal ions to inhibit
the agglomeration [18].
TEM images presented in Figs. 1a and b revealed that the Pd-NPs of C1 were highly dispersed on the -Al2O3 support, while the Pd-
NPs of C2 were somewhat aggregated into large nanoparticles during the catalyst preparation process. On the basis of the size distribution
histograms shown in Figs. 1c and d, the average size of Pd-NPs of C1 was 4.8 nm, which was much smaller than that of C2 (7.3 nm).
Moreover, for C1 catalyst, the size distribution of Pd-NPs became much narrower and uniform as compared with that of C2. In order to
know about the state of Pd and Fe on this catalyst, high resolution TEM (HRTEM) was used to analyze and explain the significant
performance of Pd-Fe/-Al2O3. HRTEMimages (Fig. 1e) of C1 catalyst presents a group of three nanoparticles (indicated as I, II and III)
with different morphology and arrangement of atomic planes. Perpendicular lines were drawn (red color) to calculate the interplanar
distances (IDs) in the micrographs, the average measure was compared with the JCPDS Cards. to identify the crystalline phase observed
in the nanoparticle. In zone I, the average measure of the IDs was 0.228 ± 0.005 nm and matched the (111) plane of the Pd crystalline
phase (JCPDS No. 04-46-1043) [19,20]. For zone II, the ID measure was 0.284 ± 0.004 nm and matched the (200) plane of O4Pd3.5
crystalline phase or the (111) plane of Fe1-xO crystalline phase (JCPDS No. 04-005-475) [21,22]. In zone III, the ID was calculated as
0.241 ± 0.005 nm, and matched the (111) plane of the FePd3 crystalline phase (JCPDS No. 04-001-7354), which indicates the formation
of a bimetallic Pd-Fe alloy. Meanwhile, Fig. 1f also detected the Pd-Fe alloy and Pd crystalline phase clearly. The presence of the
bimetallic alloy of FePd3 in the Pd-Fe/Al2O3 catalyst may produce a greater activity than monometallic Pd particles or simple mixture of
Pd and Fe catalyst [22]. On the one hand, the bimetallic Pd alloy with a second metal such as Fe or Co as the catalytic sites have a higher