N‑Doped CMK‑3 Carbons Supporting Palladium Nanoparticles as Catalysts for Hydrodechlorination

The effect of nitrogen doping of a carbon support on the activity of Pd catalysts in the hydrodechlorination of 4-chlorophenol in water has been studied. Highly mesoporous CMK-3 carbons have been synthesized by infiltration of a commercial resol resin into SBA-15 silica followed by pyrolysis at 700 °C and removal of the template with NaOH. Nitrogen doping was achieved by infiltrating 1,10-phenantroline together with the resin. Equivalent porous texture and Pd nanoparticles size were obtained for the catalysts based on undoped and nitrogen-doped CMK-3 carbons. The catalysts allowed fast 4-chlorophenol hydrodechlorination with exclusive selectivity to phenol. A higher activity was observed at 30 °C for the catalyst with the N-doped support (76–81 mmol·gPd–1·min–1), showing the beneficial effect of nitrogen doping of the carbon supports. The different behavior was also evidenced by the activation energies calculated for the catalysts with undoped (53 kJ·mol–1) and N-doped CMK-3 carbon (36 kJ·mol–1) in the 3070 °C temperature range