Easily synthesized self-nitrogen doped carbon-supported nickel bio-based sustainable catalyst for hydrogenation of benzylamine from benzonitrile

Benzylamine production from the hydrogenation of nitrile is attractive, but most of the catalysts are complicated and costly. In this paper, a simple synthesis of self-nitrogen-doped carbon-supported nickel biobased sustainable catalyst (Ni-JKS-600) for benzylamine hydrogenation with benzonitrile has been reported. The catalyst has high specific surface area, abundant micro-mesoporous structure and nickel hydrogenation active site. By optimizing the reaction conditions, a mild reaction condition (120 ℃, 2 MPa H 2 , 3 h) was determined, and it was found that the solvent had a significant effect on the selectivity of benzylamine, and the selectivity of benzylamine could reach 97.08 % when ammonia methanol was used as the solvent. Ni-JKS-600 catalyst is superior to precious metal catalysts (Ru, Pt, Ir, Pd) in aniline selectivity, and is comparable to Raney nickel catalyst, which shows its potential application in industrial production of amines. The catalyst uses cheap and widely available chitin as carbon and nitrogen source, and has the characteristics of green economy with simple preparation method and low cost. It is expected to replace precious metal catalyst for efficient production of benzylamine in the future.