Mechanochemical Preparation of Magnetically Separable Fe and Cu-Based Bimetallic Nanocatalysts for Vanillin Production

Abstract

A highly sustainable method for the preparation of supported iron oxide and copper nanoparticles (NPs) on a biomass-derived carbon by solvent-free mechanochemical process is reported. In-situ mechanochemically obtained extracts from orange peel could behave as a green reducing agent, allowing the formation of Cu metal nanoparticles as well as generating a magnetic phase (magnetite) in the systems via partial Fe3+ reduction. At the same time, orange peel residues also served as template and carbon source, adding oxygen functionalities, which were found to benefit the catalytic performance of mechanochemically synthesized nanomaterials. The series of magnetic Cu-Fe@OP were tested in the oxidation of trans-ferulic acid towards vanillin, remarkably revealing a maximum vanillin yield of 82% for the sample treated at 200 °C.

Solvent-Free Mechanochemical Synthesis and Characterization of Nickel Tellurides with Various Stoichiometries: NiTe, NiTe2 and Ni2Te3

“…The mechanochemical method, also known as mechanical alloying, is a convenient solid-state processing technique in which the precursor powders are exposed to repeated welding, fracturing, and re-welding in a high energy ball mill. The method has been developed in the 1970s for the fabrication of nickel- and iron-base superalloys for applications in the aerospace industry [ 32 , 33 ] and is nowadays widely used in the processing of advanced materials like alloys [ 34 ], bimetallic nanocatalysts [ 35 ], oxide materials [ 36 , 37 ], carbon-based materials [ 38 , 39 , 40 ], etc. The first reports of mechanochemical synthesis of metal chalcogenides date back to the 1990s, and since then, a number of nanosized sulfides, selenides, and tellurides have been prepared using this method.…”