Ordered mesoporous alumina with ultra-large pore size catalyze cinnamaldehyde to cinnamyl alcohol with high selectivity

At present, most of mesoporous alumina are synthesized by a soft template method with pore diameters of less than 10 nm, which tends to cause an amorphous structure and great limitations for the catalytic reaction. Therefore, we chose to use triblock copolymer as a template and self-assembly by solvent evaporation to synthesize an ultra-large mesoporous alumina without any pore expanding agents. The synthesized mesoporous alumina is used for the hydrogenation reaction of 4-methoxy cinnamaldehyde, and the mesoporous alumina exhibited high conversion and excellent selectivity. Compared with industrial synthesis of 4-methoxy cinnamyl alcohol, the reaction can be a complete conversion of 4-methoxy cinnamaldehyde to 4-methoxy cinnamyl alcohol without any by-products.