Room temperature complete reduction of nitroarenes over a novel Cu/SiO2iFe2O4 nano-catalyst in an aqueous medium - a kinetic and mechanistic study

The current investigation reports the preparation of a novel system, Cu/SiO2iFe2O4, as characterised by XRD, XPS, IR, SEM-EDS, TEM, ICP-AES and VSM data. Its catalytic activity was explored in nitroarene reduction using 4-nitrophenol as the model substrate for studying the reaction kinetics. The studies revealed the rate constant of the reaction at room temperature to be 0.325 min-1. Each test reaction here contained only 10.6 mu g of copper, wherein the activity factor was 0.511 s-1 mg-1, which is by far the highest for any non-noble metal catalyst reported for this reaction. Moreover, the energy of activation of the reaction was found to be 30.4 kJ mol-1, which falls in the lower range of the average Eact reported in the literature for the reaction under study. Further insights on the reaction pathway indicated that the reaction followed a direct route for nitro-reduction via the formation of a nitroso derivative. Overall, we present herein an economical, efficient and environmentally benign methodology for nitroarene reduction using the designed catalyst.