Abstract
Alcohol dehydrogenation offered a green and sustainable process to produce clean H-2 and aldehyde or ketone, which was used in many pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. In this paper, NiFe2O4 nanoparticles have been fabricated by co-precipitation-assisted ultrasonic radiation method. The structural, spectroscopic, electrical, textural, and magnetic properties of the as-synthesized catalysts were examined by X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, DC conductivity, N-2 sorption, and vibrating sample magnetometer. Structural data indicated that all the prepared samples have cubic spinel phase with the average crystallite sizes of 9-21 nm for sonicated samples and 11-32 nm for the non-sonicated samples. In addition, N-2 adsorption-desorption data suggested that these solids are mesoporous catalysts. Magnetic measurements demonstrated that NiFe2O4 catalysts exhibited ferromagnetic nature and the values of saturation magnetization (M-s) were found to be improved with the ultrasound radiation and annealing temperatures. Catalytic activity results indicate that NiFe2O4 nanoparticles are active and selective catalysts towards isopropyl alcohol dehydrogenation into acetone with a conversion of 100% and selectivity to acetone > 75%.