Scalable synthesis of selective hydrodeoxygenation inverted Pd@TiO 2 nanocatalysts

Novel developments in catalytic nanomaterials will enable more sustainable processes provided that scalable synthetic methods can be developed. Recently, inverted systems consisting of palladium nanoparticles (Pd NPs) encapsulated in a porous titania shell (Pd@TiO 2 ) that has micropores have been associated with high selectivity for hydrodeoxygenation. These catalysts are currently synthesized in low-throughput batch processes that can be difficult to scale because of poor mixing at large scales. Mixing can be controlled through a continuous jet-mixing reactor that has been previously demonstrated to produce monodisperse nanomaterials. A jet-mixing process is developed for continuous Pd@TiO 2 synthesis by evaluating the effect of important synthesis parameters in batch. Pd@TiO 2 synthesized through jet-mixing is found to contain comparable microporosity to its lab scale batch-synthesized counterpart. The materials produced using the jet-mixing reactor achieve > 99.3 % selectivity for the HDO product (i.e., toluene) over the decarbonylation product (benzene). Overall, these results demonstrate that the continuous jet-mixing reactor is a promising technology for scalable production of selective Pd@TiO 2 nanocatalysts. Graphical abstract