Caprolactam is an important petrochemical platform molecule
that
has been widely used to prepare nylon-6 and other polyamide engineering
plastics. Compared with traditional routes in caprolactam synthesis
with environmentally unfriendly wastes, a recent green route involves
benzene semihydrogenation, cyclohexene hydration, cyclohexanol dehydrogenation,
cyclohexanone ammoximation, and Beckmann rearrangement. In most of
these reactions, zeolite catalysts have displayed crucial roles, for
example, ZSM-5 zeolite for hydration, TS-1 zeolite for ammoximation,
and S-1 zeolite for Beckmann rearrangement. In this Review, these
processes and the catalytic performances of different zeolite catalysts
are summarized, and the significant advantages of zeolites compared
with the previous homogeneous catalysts and general supported catalysts
are mentioned. In addition, the structure–performance interplay
of these zeolites was particularly discussed, which is expected to
guide the development of more efficient zeolite catalysts with optimized
structures in the future.