Revisiting the Semi-Hydrogenation of Phenylacetylene to Styrene over Palladium-Lead Alloyed Catalysts on Precipitated Calcium Carbonate Supports

The quest for improved heterogeneous catalysts often leads to sophisticated solutions, which are expensive and tricky to scale up industrially. Herein, the effort to upgrade the existing inorganic nonmetallic materials has seldom been prioritized by the catalysis community, which could deliver cost-effective solutions to upgrade the industrial catalysts catalog. With this philosophy in mind, we demonstrate in this work that alloyed palladium-lead (Pd-Pb) deposited on novel precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) supports could be considered an upgraded version of the industrial Lindlar catalyst for the semi-hydrogenation of phenylacetylene to styrene. By utilizing PCC supports of variable surface areas (up to 60 m2/g) and alloyed Pd-Pb loading, supported by material characterization tools, we showcase that achieving the “active-site isolation” feature could be the most pivotal criterion to maximize semi-hydrogenated alkenes selectivity at the expense of prohibiting the complete hydrogenation to alkanes. The calcite phase of our PCC supports governs the ultimate catalysis, via complexation with uniformly distributed alloyed Pb, which may facilitate the desired “active-site isolation” feature to boost the selectivity to the preferential product. Through this work, we also advocate increasing research efforts on mineral-based inorganic nonmetallic materials to deliver novel and improved cost-effective catalytic systems.