Acceptorless dehydrogenation of 1-phenylethanol using Pd/TiO2 catalysts prepared by sol immobilisation

Reversible hydrogenation and acceptorless dehydrogenation of organic molecules would enable pre-existing technologies and infrastructure to be leveraged for the storage and transport of hydrogen. We report the synthesis of active Pd/TiO2 catalysts prepared by sol immobilisation for the acceptorless dehydrogenation of 1-phenylethanol to acetophenone with evolution of molecular hydrogen. The catalyst converts 1-phenylethanol with a TOF of 3600 mol(1-PE) h(-1) mol(Pd)-1 while maintaining high selectivity (>95%) at over 80% conversion. This represents a 3.5 x increase in catalytic activity with comparable selectivity over commercially available 5% Pd/C catalysts.