New catalysts developed in India can convert petroleum waste into useful materials

With a new catalyst, Indian researchers have successfully converted toluene from petroleum waste into benzoic acid, which can be used as food preservatives and anti fungal and bacterial infections drugs Related papers were published online recently in the Dutch journal Applied Catalysis B: environment In general, organic solvents are used in complex organic reactions, which make the reactions more expensive and produce toxic wastes In contrast, researchers at the Indian Institute of technology used water as a solvent and a green oxidant called TBHP to convert toluene Four products are usually produced when toluene is oxidized, but only benzoic acid is produced when a new type of nano catalyst of platinum stabilized by binaphthol is used According to the researchers, platinum nanoparticles are usually unstable in nature, because they tend to aggregate into large particles and their catalytic activity will be reduced The researchers used binaphthol as a stabilizer to combine with platinum nanoparticles to prevent them from agglomerating and make them easy to operate The results show that the particle size of the new catalyst does not change after 5 times of reuse The researchers also found that the use of TBHP as oxidant alone to convert toluene is large, four parts of TBHP can convert one part of toluene, which is not cost-effective Therefore, they also use molecular oxygen as the oxidant, so only two TBHP are needed to produce one part of toluene, which not only helps to reduce the cost, but also improves the yield of benzoic acid.