Highly dispersed Pt–MnOx nanoclusters for the promoted activity of mesoporous Pt–MnOx–Al2O3 in dehydrogenation of perhydro-benzyltoluene

Pt single atom is vulnerable to sintering under endothermic reaction conditions and sometimes shows low activity in the conversion of bulky molecules, e.g., dehydrogenation of perhydro-benzyltoluene (H12-BT) for the state-of-the-art liquid organic hydrogen carrier system. Such weakness has been tackled using various approaches including Pt nanoclustering with metal oxide(s). We herein describe the excellence of mesoporous Pt–MnOx–Al2O3 (mPtMnA) in H12-BT dehydrogenation, where solvent-deficient precipitation (SDP) is employed for catalyst preparation. When prepared at the Mn/Pt molar ratio of 0.33 and the ramp of 10 °C min−1 in H2 reduction, the catalyst (named mPt0.33MnA_r10) affords the best efficiency of 94 % H2 yield. This results from highly dispersed Pt–MnOx nanoclusters generated by the surface diffusion of Pt atoms to oxophilic Mn oxides distributed homogeneously on the surface of support. Consequently, this study demonstrates that the SDP method favors Pt nanoclustering with MnOx, which will greatly impact on dehydrogenation catalysis.