ABSTRACT
Two isomers of nitrochlorobenzene (o-, and p-NCB) were treated by a Pd/Fe catalyst in aqueous solutions through catalytic amination and dechlorination. Nitrochlorobenzenes are rapidly converted to form chloroanilines (CAN) first through an amination process, and then rapidly dechlorinated to become aniline (AN) and Cl(-), without the involvement of any other intermediate reaction products. The amination and dechlorination reaction are believed to take place predominantly on the surface site of the Pd/Fe catalysts. The dechlorination rate of the reductive degradation of the two isomers of nitrochlorobenzene (o-, and p-NCB) in the presence of Pd/Fe as a catalyst was measured experimentally. In all cases, the reaction rate constants were found to increase with the decrease in the Gibbs free energy (correlation with the activation energy) of NCBs formation; the activation energy of each dechlorination reaction was measured to be 95.83 and 77.05 kJ/mol, respectively for o- and p-NCB. The results demonstrated that p-NCBs were reduced more easily than o-NCBs.