A comparative study of catalytic dehydrogenation of perhydro-N-ethylcarbazole over noble metal catalysts

N-ethylcarbazole is one of the most promising liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs) as it can be catalytically hydrogenated and dehydrogenated at relatively moderate temperatures. In the present work, we report a systematic study on dehydrogenation of perhydro-N-ethylcarbazole over several important supported noble metal catalysts to identify the optimal catalyst for temperature-controlled dehydrogenation. The reaction takes three consecutive stages with two intermediates of octahydro-N-ethylcarbazole and tetrahydro-N-ethylcarbazole. The initial catalytic activity of the selected noble metal catalysts for the dehydrogenation process was found to follow the order of Pd > Pt > Ru > Rh. 100% selectivity toward the final product of N-ethylcarbazole and fully dehydrogenation was achieved over the supported Pt and Pd catalysts. The kinetics of the three stage dehydrogenation processes over the catalysts was studied and the rate constants were derived. The results indicate that the dehydrogenation reaction rate decreases significantly with the reaction stage for all the selected noble catalysts and the conversion from tetrahydro-N-ethylcarbazole to N-ethylcarbazole was found to be the rate-limiting step of the entire reaction process.