Liquid-phase selective hydrogenation of furfural to furfuryl alcohol over Pt- and PtFe-incorporated mesoporous carbon

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the liquid-phase selective hydrogenation of furfural to furfuryl alcohol in a batch reactor at 50?C, 20 bar H2 using water and methanol as the solvent. This study has been divided into two sections. The characteristics and catalytic properties of OMC-supported Pt catalysts (Pt/OMC-one-pot) prepared by one-step modified soft-template self-assembly method were compared with the Pt impregnated on OMC, activated carbon (AC), and non-uniform meso/macroporous carbon (MC) in the first section. Larger Pt particle size (~4 nm) was obtained on the Pt/OMC-one-pot comparing to all the impregnated ones, in which the Pt particle sizes were in the range 0.5 – 2 nm. The Pt/OMC-one-pot exhibited the highest furfural conversion and FA selectivity under aqueous conditions. In the second section, ferromagnetic element (x = Fe, Co, Ni, and Nd) promoted Pt/AC catalysts were investigated in this rection. The 0.15FePt/AC exhibited complete conversion of furfural with FA selectivity 74% after only 1 h reaction time in water. The superior catalyst performances were correlated with the higher Pt dispersion, the presence of low coordination Pt sites and the strong Pt-Fe interaction However, to simply use a magnet for catalyst separation, 0.5 wt% Fe was the minimum Fe loading on the Pt/AC. The 0.5FePt/AC still exhibited good magnetic properties after the 3rd consecutive runs.�