Hydrogenation of a Benzene-Toluene Mixture Using Metal Nanoparticles Stabilized by a Hyper-Crosslinked Aromatic Polymer

Hydrogenation of aromatic compounds is a widely used catalytic process in modern industry. Selective hydrogenation of benzene (BZ)-toluene (TL) mixtures is an important industrial process as it allows the purification of BZ for further synthetic purposes. In this work, the hydrogenation of a BZ-TL mixture (at a molar ratio close to 1) was studied for varying reaction parameters (temperature in the range of 100-180 degrees C and pressure in the range of 1-7 MPa) using Pt-, Pd-, and Ru-containing nanoparticles stabilized by an amino-functionalized hyper-crosslinked aromatic polymer (HAP). Among the synthesized catalytic systems, Ru/HAP containing ruthenium(IV) oxide was shown to be the most active and selective one, allowing 44 % selectivity with respect to cyclohexane at nearly 100 % of BZ conversion.