Palladium encapsulated within magnetic hollow mesoporous TiO2 spheres (Pd/Fe3O4@hTiO2) as a highly efficient and recyclable catalysts for hydrodechlorination of chlorophenols

Herein, we introduced a method to encapsulate Pd(0) within TiO2 hollow mesoporous nanostructures. TiO2 hollow spheres offer a number of advantageous characteristics, including low cost, low toxicity, relatively high photocatalytic activity and high chemical stability. In addition, it can also effectively avoid the agglomeration and precipitation of noble metal nanoparticles in the catalytic reaction. The catalyst was characterized by TEM, XRD, XPS, ICP and VSM. We found that the catalyst presented a high activity for HDC of 4-CP under mild reaction conditions. Beyond that, the catalyst could be easily regained by an external magnet from the reaction mixture and recycled seven times without any significant loss in activity.