Construction of Diluted Ni-Brønsted Acid Synergistic Bifunctional Sites for Selective Dehydrochlorination

Metal and acid sites are regarded as the most vital catalytically active components in heterogeneous catalysis. In this paper, we simply constructed the abundant unsaturated penta-coordinated species as Brønsted acid sites (AB), which could collaborate with Fe atoms-diluted and electron-modified Ni species (diluted Niδ−) to generate the bifunctional sites. The presence and integration of these two catalytically active sites significantly improved the reaction efficiency and altered the product distribution for the selective dehydrochlorination of 1,1,1,3-tetrachloropropane toward the target 1,1,3-trichloropropene. Specifically, the obtained catalysts with the synergistic sites demonstrated the synergistic catalytic functions: AB sites served as the adsorption center for 1,1,1,3-tetrachloropropane, while Fe-diluted and electron-enriched Ni species were responsible for activating hydrogen species, which further overflowed to the surface AB sites to react with the adsorbed C–Cl bonds. This work underscores the importance of assembling metal and acid sites to develop state-of-the-art catalysts with tailored dehydrochlorination performance, offering the potential for more efficient and selective industrial processes.