ABSTRACT
The palladium catalyzed oxidation of toluene has been used for some time as a viable method for the preparation of benzylacetate. It was thought that a layer of tin hydroxide placed on the support material by absorption-precipitation would be more strongly held. The addition of a palladium salt would then produce a palladium-tin complex on the surface of this tin hydroxide layer. In order to determine what type of silica would give the most stable and active catalysts a series of catalysts was prepared using silicas with various Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface areas and pore distributions. In order to diminish any problems caused by a wide range of pore sizes only silicas having well-defined porosity with narrow size ranges were used. Included were three meso-and three microporous supports having low, intermediate, and high BET surface areas.
