Promoting the hydrogenation of acetone C-C coupling into pinacol with dehydrogenation of formic acid over a NaOH-treated g-CN photocatalyst

• Published in: New journal of chemistry Vol. 44; no. 29; pp. 12613 - 12618
• Main Authors: Cao, Baoyue, Wang, Xiangting, Chang, Liangliang, Liu, Xiuyu, Wang, Han, Guo, Jinyi, Zhou, Chunsheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 27.07.2020
• ISSN: 1144-0546; 1369-9261
• DOI: 10.1039/d0nj01707h

We aimed to construct a method involving the photocatalytic oxidative dehydrogenation of formic acid (FA) to promote the acetone reductive hydrogenation of C-C coupling, where photo-electrons and photo-holes could be effectively used. The results showed that the conversion rates of acetone and FA in the g-C 3 N 4 photocatalytic acetone-FA coupling reaction system were 88.74% and 60.82%, respectively. Further research showed that the Na + concentration on the surface of the C 3 N 4 photocatalyst was also positively correlated with pinacol selectivity. The g-C 3 N 4 treated with 5 M NaOH showed a high pinacol selectivity of 60.87%, which was increased by 32.30%. NaOH-treated g-C 3 N 4 photocatalytic dehydrogenation of formic acid to promote the hydrogenation of acetone C-C coupling into pinacol was carried out in which photo-electrons and photo-holes were effectively used.