Palladium hydride promotion by KHCO₃ enhances the decarboxylation rate

Direct conversion of carboxylic acids to alkanes by decarboxylation on PdH_x is an effective way to defunctionalize biomass-derived feedstocks. This catalytic decarboxylation generally suffers from low activity and selectivity loss by competing hydrogenation routes. Anchoring the carboxylate group with K⁺ on PdH_x/C increases the rate of decarboxylation by more than one order of magnitude. Temperature-programmed desorption of CO₂ shows that the modification increases the surface basicity. In turn, this induces dissociative adsorption of the acid carboxylic group. The resulting adsorption as carboxylate facilitates the C–C bond cleavage by weakening the bond adjacent to the carboxyl group.