Photothermal dependence on catalytic activity and selectivity of HMF and benzyl alcohol oxidation over Pd/1D‐TiO2 nanotubes

Abstract BACKGROUND Photothermal catalytic oxidation technology for synthesis of high value‐added chemicals has become a hot topic of research at home and abroad. As a special structure, titania (TiO 2 ) nanotubes (Ti‐NTs) possess larger specific surface area and adsorption capacity, which have shown great application prospects in photothermal catalytic oxidation. RESULTS In this work, high‐performance palladium (Pd‐Ti‐NTs catalyst were prepared and applied to the photothermal catalytic oxidation of 5‐hydroxymethyl (HMF) and benzyl alcohol. The photothermal dependence on catalytic activity and selectivity of HMF and benzyl alcohol oxidation was studied in detail. The results revealed that compared with thermal catalytic oxidation, the catalysts showed significantly higher conversions of both benzyl alcohol and HMF under light. in particular, HMF conversion increase from 55.6% to 99.7%. Aldehyde oxidation is inhibited by alcohol and can be dramatically promoted by light radiation. This is probably because alcohol can inhibit the adsorption of aldehyde, and this inhibiting effect is weakened through light radiation, thus promoting the oxidation of aldehydes. Therefore, the selectivity of the final products 2,5‐furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) and benzoic acid were dramatically increased in both systems under light radiation, and the selectivity for FDCA was obviously increased from 5.8% to 61.3%, and the yield reached 61.0%, which is higher than that of most of the reported Pd‐TiO 2 ‐based catalysts for FDCA. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we verify that Pd‐Ti‐NTs could preferentially promote the conversion of aldehydes to acids in the presence of light, and obtained catalysts with high catalytic performance and high stability for benzyl alcohol and HMF oxidation. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI).