Carbocatalysis

Carbocatalysis is a form of catalysis that uses heterogeneous carbon materials for the transformation or synthesis of organic or inorganic substrates.

[citation needed] One of the most common examples of carbocatalysis is the oxidative dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene to styrene discovered in the 1970s.

[1] Also in the industrial process of (non-oxidative) dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene, the potassium-promoted iron oxide catalyst is coated with a carbon layer as the active phase.

In another early example,[2] a variety of substituted nitrobenzenes were reduced to the corresponding aniline using hydrazine and graphite as the catalyst.

[7] Fullerenes were used in the catalytic reduction of nitrobenzene to aniline in the presence of H2.