Synthesis, characteristics and application of mesocellular foam carbon (MCF-C) as catalyst for dehydrogenation of ethanol to acetaldehyde

This research focused on synthesis of mesocellular foam carbon (MCF-C) and this catalyst was employed dehydrogenation of ethanol to acetaldehyde. The mesocellular foam silica (MCF-Si) was used as the template of material following by converting the surfactant residue (Pluronic P123) into carbon layers using H2SO4 and NaOH etching. The obtained MCF-C exhibited the highest surface area of 995 m2/g among these materials, and mesoporous size of 4.2 nm with spherical shape and interconnected pore. Furthermore, total acidity of MCF-C also increased from 427.07 (MCF-Si) to 682.64 μmole. In the part of catalytic test, the MCF-C was used in gas-phase ethanol dehydrogenation at 200–400 °C. It revealed that the MCF-C exhibited the highest ethanol conversion (ca. 17.5 %) at 400 °C due to its high acidity without significant deactivation of catalyst within 12 h. Besides, its high ethanol conversion, it is worth noting that the acetaldehyde selectivity (ca. 80.3 %) was also high, especially at 400 °C. This can be attributed to the proper mesoporous size that can facilitate the diffusion of acetaldehyde without further decomposing at high temperature.