Catalytic performance of Ni/γ-Al2O3 for hydrogenation of 2-ethyl-2-hexenal

The effect of reaction conditions on the catalytic performance of Ni/γ-Al2O3 was investigated and the result showed that Ni/γ-Al2O3 showed excellent catalytic activity. However, the catalytic performance of the recovered Ni/γ-Al2O3 catalyst declined dramatically. The fresh and the recovered catalysts were comparatively analyzed by means of XRD, XPS and FT-IR techniques. The result demonstrated that the main reason for the activity decline of the recovered Ni/γ-Al2O3 catalyst is that the surface Ni has been reoxidized to NiO. After calcination and reduction, the recovered Ni/γ-Al2O3 catalyst could be reused four times without a significant decrease in its catalytic performance.