Well-Dispersed H₃PW₁₂O₄₀/H₄SiW₁₂O₄₀ Nanoparticles on Mesoporous Polymer for Highly Efficient Acid-Catalyzed Reactions

With the depletion of fossil fuels, development of renewable energy has attracted wide attention in recent years. The well-known polyoxometalates (POMs) of H₃PW₁₂O₄₀ (denoted as PW₁₂) and H₄SiW₁₂O₄₀ (denoted as SiW₁₂) are effective catalysts for acid-catalyzed reactions. Nevertheless, industrial application of PW₁₂ and SiW₁₂ is largely restricted by the agglomeration, separation, leaching and recycling issues. Moreover, the PW₁₂ and SiW₁₂ tend to deactivate strong proton sites due to the small surface area of 10 m²·g^–1. To overcome these problems, the PW₁₂ and SiW₁₂ have been fabricated onto a mesoporous polymer of PDVB-VBC (compound <b>1</b>) with a large surface area via tris­(2-aminoethyl)­amine (TAEA), resulting in the formation of new heterogeneous catalysts of PDVB-VBC-TAEA-PW₁₂ (compound <b>3</b>) and PDVB-VBC-TAEA-SiW₁₂ (compound <b>4</b>). Both compounds <b>3</b> and <b>4</b> possess mesoporous structures with high surface area of 121 m²·g^–1 and 131 m²·g^–1, respectively. And they have shown highly efficient and selective dehydration of fructose to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF) in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as well as esterification of lauric acid (LA) to methyl laurate. Moreover, the catalysts can be recycled for at least five times with no obvious decrease of reactivity. Therefore, such catalysts have great potential for further application from a chemical engineering point of view