Gold supported on titania for specific monohydrogenation of dinitroaromatics in the liquid phase

Abstract

Liquid-phase selective monohydrogenation of various substituted dinitroaromatics to the corresponding valuable nitroanilines was investigated on gold-based catalysts. Special attention was paid to the effect of Au particle size on this monoreduction reaction. Interestingly, TiO₂ supported gold catalysts containing a relatively larger mean Au particle size (>5 nm) showed far superior chemoselectivity for specific mono-hydrogenation of dinitroaromatics, with the highest performance attainable for the catalyst bearing Au particles of ca. 7.5 nm. Results in the intermolecular competitive hydrogenation showed that the intrinsic higher accumulation rates of the desired nitroanilines associated with the catalyst possessing larger Au particles were responsible for the high chemoselectivity observed.