Carbon nanotube is found to be a novel support for the selective hydrogenation of citral in this paper. Selective hydrogenation of citral was carried out in an autoclave at 5 MPa and 323 K. The results indicate that the selectivity of the products, unsaturated alcohols, is about 86 over Pt/CNTs catalyst and 48 over Pt/XC-72 catalyst, respectively. The differential heat of CO adsorption measured by microcalorimetry is firstly used to probe surface adsorption sites of platinum catalyst supported on carbon nanotubes. The experimental results indicate that the Pt/CNTs catalyst shows a higher initial differential heat of CO adsorption(126 kJ/mol) than the Pt/XC-72 catalyst(106 kJ/mol).
