Plant‐Mediated Synthesis of Zinc Oxide Supported Nickel‐Palladium Alloy Catalyst for the Selective Hydrogenation of 1,3‐Butadiene

Abstract We report the green synthesis of ZnO‐supported Ni‐Pd alloy nanoparticles for the gas‐phase selective hydrogenation of 1,3‐butadiene. The supported catalysts were synthesized through a simple bioreduction route using Cinnamomum Camphora leaf extract. We used XRD, SEM, TEM, and energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy to characterize and verify the nature of the catalysts. The results showed that the size of the Ni‐Pd alloy particles was (3.2±0.7), (3.4±0.3), and (3.8±0.6) nm for Ni 1 Pd 1 , Ni 1 Pd 3 , and Ni 3 Pd 1 respectively. FTIR spectroscopy revealed that the presence of stretching vibrations from C−H, −C=C−, O−H, and −C−O−O groups that remained on the surface and act as stabilizers. The influence of some reaction variables, such as the type of S‐Pd (S=Au, Ag, Ni) bimetallic catalyst, the type of metal oxide support, and the reaction temperature, on the hydrogenation activity and selectivity towards total butene ( trans ‐2‐butene, 1‐butene, and cis ‐2‐butene) is investigated. The bioreduced, supported catalysts showed excellent catalytic activity and selectivity to butene in the selective hydrogenation of 1,3‐butadiene. The calculated total butene selectivity was above 80 % for all supported S 1 ‐Pd 1 catalysts compared to 46.92 % for a monometallic Pd/ZnO catalyst. In addition, the Ni 1 ‐Pd 1 /ZnO catalyst presented the best butene yield of 88.90 %, which was 1.9 times that of the Pd/ZnO catalyst. Moreover, it remained stable over a 10 h durability experiment.