Renewable waste rice husk grafted oxo-vanadium catalyst for oxidation of tertiary amines to N-oxides

Abstract

Low cost renewable waste rice husks (RH) have been used as a support for grafting of an oxo-vanadium Schiff base via covalent attachment for the oxidation of tertiary amines to N-oxide. The synthesis of the desired RH grafted oxo-vanadium complex involves prior functionalization of the RH support with amino-propyltrimethoxysilane (APTMS) followed by its reaction with salicylaldehyde to get an RH-functionalized Schiff base which subsequently reacted with vanadyl sulphate to get the targeted oxo-vanadium catalyst. The synthesized catalyst was found to be an efficient heterogeneous catalyst and afforded an excellent yield of corresponding N-oxides via oxidation of tertiary amines with hydrogen peroxide as an oxidant. Furthermore, the synthesized catalyst was found to be quite stable and showed consistent activity for five runs without any loss in activity.