Epoxidation of alkenes using immobilized vanadyl Schiff base complex on montmorillonite as an efficient recyclable heterogeneous catalyst with tert-butyl hydroperoxide

Oxovanadium(iv) schiff base complex of n,n′-bis(5-[(triphenylphosphoniumchloride)-methylsalicylidinenaphthal-diamine)] was synthesized, characterized and immobilized on sodium montmorilloniteas a heterogeneous catalyst. the net schiff base complex and supported complex were characterized by xraydiffraction spectroscopy, ir spectroscopy, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and atomic absorptionspectroscopy techniques. the diffuse reflectance spectra data and ir spectra of the supported schiff basecomplex show that the complex was physically entrapped within sodium montmorillonite. the novelheterogeneous catalyst shows excellent catalytic activity in epoxidation of olefins using tertbutylhydroperoxidein acetonitrile. in this report, the supported vanadyl complex exhibited 100% selectivityfor epoxidation with 91% and 90% conversion for cyclohexene and cyclooctene, respectively. thesupported oxovanadium(iv) complex gave higher percent of conversion of olefins than neatoxovanadium(iv) schiff base complex.