Nitrocyclohexane hydrogenation to cyclohexanone oxime over mesoporous carbon supported Pd catalyst

•Pd/MC catalysts were used in nitrocyclohexane hydrogenation to cyclohexanone oxime.•Pd/MC catalysts show better catalytic performance than Pd/ACC under mild conditions.•MC with suitable surface area 400–500 m2 g− 1 favors cyclohexanone oxime formation.•The optimum reaction condition was obtained for Pd/HMC-1 catalyst.

Mesoporous carbon materials (MC) were prepared by soft template, hard template and hydrothermal synthesis methods. And mesoporous carbon supported palladium catalysts were obtained from incipient impregnation method. The prepared samples were characterized by nitrogen adsorption–desorption, X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and hydrogen chemisorption. Palladium supported on mesoporous carbon prepared by hard template method shows better catalytic performance, it gives the 82.2% selectivity to cyclohexanone oxime at the nitrocyclohexane conversion of 99.4% under the mild reaction conditions of 0.5 MPa and 323 K.

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