Tungsten doped mesoporous SBA‐16 as novel heterogeneous catalysts for oxidation of cyclopentene to glutaric acid

Novel heterogeneous tungsten species in mesoporous silica SBA‐16 catalysts based on ship‐in‐a‐bottle methodology are originally reported for oxidizing cyclopentene (CPE) to glutaric acid (GAC) using hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). For all W‐SBA‐16 catalysts, isolated tungsten species and octahedrally coordinated tungsten oxide species are observed while WO3 crystallites are detected for the W‐SBA‐16 catalysts with Si/ W = 5, 10, and 20. The specific surface areas and the corresponding total pore volumes decrease significantly as increasing amounts of tungsten incorporated into the pores of SBA‐16. Using tungsten‐substituted mesoporous SBA‐16 heterogeneous catalysts, high yield of GAC (55%) is achieved with low tungsten loading (for Si/W = 30, ~13 wt%) for oxidation of CPE. The W‐SBA‐16 catalysts with Si/W = 30 can be reused five times without dramatic deactivation. In fact, low catalytic activity provided by bulk WO3 implies that the highly distributed tungsten species in SBA‐16 and the steric confinement effect of SBA‐16 are key elements for the outstanding catalytic performance.