Activity study of carbon xerogel derived from polybenzoxazine as a catalyst support

Abstract

Recently, a novel nanoporous carbon derived from polybenzoxazine through a sol-gel process has been prepared as a catalyst support. In this work, the activity study of polybenzoxazine derived nanoporous carbon in biodiesel upgrading and photoelectrocatalytic of 4-nitrophenol has also been investigated. Biodiesel has been prepared through partial-hydrogenation of free fatty acid methyl ester (FAMEs) by using Pd(N03)2.2H20 as a catalyst. The effects of microstructure of carbon xerogel including micro- and meso- porous will be compared with a commercially activated carbon. It can be concluded that the Pd/carbon xerogel used less energy and amount of catalyst for biodiesel upgrading. In case of 4-nitrophenol degradation study, porous TiO2 was prepared by using carbon xerogel as a template. The photocatalytic degradation by using the resulting porous TiO2 was compared with the degradation obtained from using TiO2 loaded on carbon xerogel. It can be concluded that TiO2 loaded on carbon showed better degradation performance than that of porous TiO2 since carbon can help adsorb 4-nitrophenol.