Abstract
Flower-like mesoporous NiO nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesised by surfactant-assisted chemical precipitation process and evaluated as a catalyst for the epoxidation of cyclohexene usingmeta-chloroperoxybenzoic acid (m-CPBA) as an oxidizing agent at room temperature and 1 atm. The mesoporous NiO (MesoNiO) showed an exceptional catalytic activity for the epoxidation of cyclohexene to produce cyclohexene oxide in the optimized conditions, exhibiting an immediate reaction at room temperature with high conversion (91%) and medium selectivity (53%), usingm-CPBA/cyclohexene ratio of 1.5 in CH3CN/CH2Cl2(1:1 v/v) as a solvent. The catalytic activity of MesoNiO was compared to bulk NiO (BulkNiO). Only 65% conversion with 58% selectivity were obtained with BulkNiO. The reusability of MesoNiO catalyst has been also investigated. During four successive cycles, the conversion of cyclohexene decreased gradually to 63% for MesoNiO and to 50% for Bulk NiO with a constant cyclohexene oxide selectivity for both materials.
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