Catalytic hydrolysis of cellulose over solid acid catalysts is one of efficient pathways for the conversion of biomass into fuels and chemicals. High catalytic activity and easy separation from reaction media are two important factors for evaluating the performance of the solid acid catalysts for the cellulose hydrolysis. In this study, we report a coreshell Fe 3 O 4 @C-SO 3 H nanoparticle with a magnetic Fe 3 O 4 core encapsulated in a sulfonated carbon shell, as recyclable catalyst for the hydrolysis of cellulose. The sulfonated carbon shell shows a good activity, presenting 48.6 % cellulose conversion with 52
Breaking the electron delocalization of sp(2) carbon materials by heteroatom doping is a practical strategy to produce metal-free electrocatalysts of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) for fuel cells. Whether carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can be efficiently tuned into ORR electrocatalysts only by intrinsic defects rather than heteroatom doping has not been well studied yet in experiment and theory. Here we introduce topological defects of nonhexagon carbon rings into CNTs to break the delocalization of their orbitals and make such type of CNTs to be a high-performance ORR catalyst. The electrochemical tests and theoretical studies indicate that the O₂ chemisorption and the following electrocatalytic activity are promoted by the introduced topological defects and show a strong dependence on the defect amount. Such topological-defect CNTs (TCNTs) have an excellent ORR performance owing to a 3.8-electron-transferring process, ∼4 times higher current density and ∼120 mV more positive peak potential than normally straight CNTs. Moreover, TCNTs show a higher steady-state diffusion current density and much better stability and immunity to crossover effect as compared with commercial Pt/C catalyst. Hence, our results strongly suggest that tuning the surface structure of CNTs with nonhexagon carbon rings is a novel strategy for designing advanced ORR electrocatalysts for fuel cells.
In this study, few-layered tungsten disulfide (WS2) was prepared using a liquid phase exfoliation (LPE) method, and its thermal catalytic effects on an important kind of energetic salts, dihydroxylammonium-5,5′-bistetrazole-1,1′-diolate (TKX-50), were investigated. Few-layered WS2 nanosheets were obtained successfully from LPE process. And the effects of the catalytic activity of the bulk and few-layered WS2 on the thermal decomposition behavior of TKX-50 were studied by using synchronous thermal analysis (STA). Moreover, the thermal analysis data was analyzed furtherly by using the thermokinetic software AKTS. The results showed the WS2 materials had an intrinsic thermal catalysis performance for TKX-50 thermal decomposition. With the few-layered WS2 added, the initial decomposition temperature and activation energy (Ea) of TKX-50 had been decreased more efficiently. A possible thermal catalysis decomposition mechanism was proposed based on WS2. Two dimensional-layered semiconductor WS2 materials under thermal excitation can promote the primary decomposition of TKX-50 by enhancing the H-transfer progress.
A novel silica catalyst was synthesized by evaporation-induced self-assembly (EISA) method and tested for the catalytic selective hydrolysis of cellulose to glucose. This silica catalyst exhibited a higher catalytic activity than other oxides prepared by the same method, such as ZrO 2 , TiO 2 , and Al 2 O 3 . Using silica as a catalyst, cellulose was selectively hydrolyzed into glucose with a glucose yield as high as 50% under hydrothermal conditions without hydrogen gas. The silica catalyst was characterized by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results of temperature-programmed desorption of ammonia (NH 3 -TPD) and textural properties indicated that the synergistic effect between strong acidity and a suitable pore diameter of the silica catalyst may be responsible for its high activity. In addition, the catalyst was recyclable and showed excellent stability during the recycle catalytic runs.
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