The team of LIU Jian at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics has designed a submicron reactor of eggshell structure, loaded with metal nanoparticles into a zinc oxide-microporous carbon core shell (Pd&ZnO@carbon) which showed high selectivity (> 99%) in the hydrogenation of phenylacetylene to styrene. Conversion and selectivity were much higher compared to Pd/ZnO (2.2 times) and Pd/C (1.7 times) particles under the same Pd loading. In addition, the Pd&ZnO@carbon submicron reactor showed excellent catalytic stability and remained active after 25 hours of reaction.
CAS news release, August 29, 2018