Palladium hydride promotion by KHCO3 enhances the decarboxylation rate

Direct conversion of carboxylic acids to alkanes by decarboxylation on PdHx is an effective way to defunctionalize biomass-derived feedstocks. This catalytic decarboxylation generally suffers from low activity and selectivity loss by competing hydrogenation routes. Anchoring the carboxylate group with K+ on PdHx/C increases the rate of decarboxylation by more than one order of magnitude. Temperature-programmed desorption of CO2 shows that the modification increases the surface basicity. In turn, this induces dissociative adsorption of the acid carboxylic group. The resulting adsorption as carboxylate facilitates the C-C bond cleavage by weakening the bond adjacent to the carboxyl group.