Selective Hydrogenation of Benzene: Progress of Understanding for the Ru-Based Catalytic System Design

Selective hydrogenation of benzene toward cyclohexene is an economically interesting and technically challenging reaction, and catalytic system design is the kernel for selective hydrogenation of benzene. In this work, we mainly summarize our theoretical and experimental approaches, based on enhancing the yield of cyclohexene over Ru catalysts, to get deeper understanding for designing the catalytic system. Basic thermodynamics and kinetic study, amorphous Ru-M-B-based catalytic systems, Ru-Zn system (including both organic additives and inorganic additives) and Ru-M catalytic system were mainly discussed. With the gradually deeper understanding, a finely controlled nonadditive Ru-BZSS catalytic system was developed. Finally, we review the faced challenges in the current work and possible opportunities in the future research. We believe that the proposed understanding of catalysts for selective hydrogenation of benzene will provide inspiration on catalytic system designing for selective hydrogenation reaction.