Nowadays, the production of acetaldehyde heavily relies
on the
petroleum industry. Developing new catalysts for the ethanol dehydrogenation
process that could sustainably substitute current acetaldehyde production
methods is highly desired. Among the ethanol dehydrogenation catalysts,
copper-based materials have been intensively studied. Unfortunately,
the Cu-based catalysts suffer from sintering and coking, which lead
to rapid deactivation with time-on-stream. Phosphorus doping has been
demonstrated to diminish coking in methanol dehydrogenation, fluid
catalytic cracking, and ethanol-to-olefin reactions. This work reports
a pioneering application of the well-characterized copper phosphinate
complexes as molecular precursors for copper-based ethanol dehydrogenation
catalysts enriched with phosphate groups (
Cu-phosphate/SiO
2
). Three new catalysts (
CuP-1
,
CuP-2
, and
CuP-3
), prepared by the deposition
of complexes {Cu(SAAP)}
n
(
1
), [Cu
6
(BSAAP)
6
] (
2
), and [Cu
3
(NAAP)
3
] (
3
) on the surface of commercial
SiO
2
, calcination at 500 °C, and reduction in the
stream of the forming gas 5% H
2
/N
2
at 400 °C,
exhibited unusual properties. First, the catalysts showed a rapid
increase in catalytic activity. After reaching the maximum conversion,
the catalyst started to deactivate. The unusual behavior could be
explained by the presence of the phosphate phase, which made Cu
2+
reduction more difficult. The phosphorus content gradually
decreased during time-on-stream, copper was reduced, and the activity
increased. The deactivation of the catalyst could be related to the
copper diffusion processes. The most active
CuP-1
catalyst
reaches a maximum of 73% ethanol conversion and over 98% acetaldehyde
selectivity at 325 °C and WHSV = 2.37 h
–1
.