Carbon nitride doped VxOy/SBA-15 as highly efficient catalysts for the oxidation of ethyl lactate to ethyl pyruvate

Development of high-performance heterogeneous catalysts for the selective oxidation of ethyl lactate (EL) to ethyl pyruvate (EP) is very important in the field of sustainable chemistry. In this work, a series of carbon nitride (CN) doped wVxOy/CN-SBA-15 (w = 0.5–4.8%) catalysts were prepared. The doping of CN could significantly enhance the activity of VxOy/CN-SBA-15 catalyst due to the synergistic effect of V species, CN and SBA-15. The 2.6 VxOy/CN-SBA-15 was identified as the most optimum catalyst, offering a high EL conversion (93.0%) and EP selectivity (98.7%) at 130 °C after 3 h of reaction. The O2-TPD and H2-TPR results confirmed that the redox properties of 2.6 VxOy/CN-SBA-15 are significantly improved compared with 2.7 VxOy/SBA-15, which plays an important role in the oxidation reaction. In addition, the control experiments indicated that the pyridinic-N rather than pyrrolic-N of the VxOy/CN-SBA-15 catalyst accelerated the oxidation of EL to EP.