Hydrogenation of phenol to cyclohexanol using carbon encapsulated Ni–Co alloy nanoparticles

The preparation of cost-effective and highly active catalysts for hydrogenation of phenol to cyclohexanol remains a great challenge. Here, we develop a simple and controllable synthetic route to prepare non-precious bimetallic NiCo(x/y)@C–T catalysts (Ni/Co = x/y, T = pyrolysis temperature) from NiCo(x/y)–MOF-74 for hydrogenation of phenol with cyclohexanol as the only product under mild reaction conditions. The results showed that all the bimetallic catalysts performed much better than their corresponding monometallic catalysts because of the strong synergistic effect between Ni and Co. And NiCo(1/2)@C-600 exhibited the best performance with 100% phenol and 100% cyclohexanol selectivity at the reaction conditions of a temperature of 120 °C, a H2 pressure of 1.5 MPa and time of 2 h. Furthermore, this series of catalysts also displayed excellent recyclability. We believe that this MOF-templated strategy can provide a simple and repeatable route to synthesize high-performance hydrogenation catalysts.