Tandem catalytic methylation of naphthalene using CO2 and H2

We report here the direct methylation of naphthalene using CO2 and H2, which is distinctly more effective than the counterpart methylation with methanol. Benefiting from well-balanced specific rates for CO2-to-methanol conversion over ZnZrOx and the subsequent methylation over H-Beta, significantly enhanced selectivity (93.7%) to monomethylnaphthalenes was achieved.