Selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol over sulphated zirconia incorporated ordered mesoporous carbon by a hard template method

An ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) support was prepared by a hard template method using cellulose (C source) and SBA-16 (silica source) as templates. The silica-carbon composite was treated with 10 % HF to completely remove silica from the composite to create a mesoporous nature. Afterwards, Zr (10–30 wt%) and 4 % of SO42- were incorporated over OMC by a hydrolysis method. The prepared catalysts were characterized by various techniques such as XRD, Raman, BET, Py-FT-IR, TGA, SEM, Elemental mapping, and TEM. The detailed investigation of selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol (BzOH) to benzaldehyde (BzH). This study exhibited the SO42-/Zr-OMC (30) catalyst showed its superior activity in the oxidation of benzyl alcohol (about>97 % of the conversion and BzH selectivity of>98 %) under the optimized reaction conditions. Furthermore, the reusability of the SO42-/Zr-OMC (30) catalyst up to the 5th run. This result revealed the stability of the prepared SO42-/Zr-OMC (30) catalyst, which was associated with its physicochemical properties.