The myth that gold cannot act as a catalyst has been discarded in view of recent studies, which have demonstrated the high catalytic efficiency of pure nano-gold and supported nano-gold catalysts. In recent years, numerous papers have described the use of supported nano-gold particles for catalysis in view of their action on CO and O2 to form CO2, as well as a variety of other reactions. Special emphasis is placed on the oxidation studies undertaken on model nano-Au systems. In this work a solvent free oxidation of 1-phenyl ethanol was carried out using gold supported on ceria-silica, ceriatitania, ceria- zirconia and ceria-alumina at 160 0C. Almost 88-97% conversion was obtained with >99% selectivity. Temperature screening was done from 70 to 160 0C.Catalysts were prepared by deposition co-precipitation method and deposition was determined by EDEX analysis.
