Environmentally-friendly fabrication of Pd nanocatalysts with efficient catalytic dehydrogenation of dodecahydro-N-ethylcarbazole

The environmentally-friendly preparation of high performance catalytic dodecahydro-N-ethylcarbazole (12H-NEC) dehydrogenation catalysts is consistent with green chemistry. Beta zeolite loaded ultrafine palladium nanocatalysts (Pd/Beta) were fabricated by ultrasound in-situ reduction (USR) in the absence of chemical reducing and stabilizing agents, and used to efficiently catalyze 12H-NEC dehydrogenation. The catalysts were characterized by XPS, XRD, TEM, SEM and FT-IR, which revealed that Pd nanoparticles (NPs) were highly dispersed on the surface of Beta zeolite with an average particle size of 1.84 nm. The USR method facilitated the metal-carrier interaction, which led to better catalytic activity and stability for dehydrogenation of 12H-NEC, the efficiency of dehydrogenation was 100 % at 6 h and the TOF achieved 70.44 min(-1), when it still reached 94 % after 7 cycles.