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Abstract

The use of carbon materials instead of (mixed) metal oxides in selective oxidation catalysis could emerge to be of basic interest for the catalysis community. Low dimensional carbon allotropes such as multiwalled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with high structural homogeneity provide the characteristics of model catalysts with well defined active sites as compared with polyvalent transition metal oxides featuring complex electronic and spin structures. The oxydehydrogenation (ODH) reaction over carbon has been discovered in 1979 by Alkhazov et al.[1] From the mechanistic point of view, quinone groups are believed be the active site. These nucleophilic oxygen species can selectively abstract hydrogen atoms and the formed phenol groups are subsequently reoxidized by O2. We choose the ODH of propane and ethylbenzene (EB) as the model reactions. Propane is widely investigated as a substrate in this reaction and mechanistic models for the reaction sequence over metal oxide catalysts are nu-merously suggested. It is equipped with a high C–H bond strength (410.5 kJ mol-1). In contrary to the alkane, the weak C-H bond in benzylic position (357.3 kJ mol-1) makes the molecule highly reactive for ODH.