A selective oxidative valorization of biomass-derived furfural and ethanol with the supported gold catalysts

Abstract

Abstract The oxidative upgrading of renewable furfural (FUR) and ethanol is an important way to produce high-quality liquid fuel and value-added furanic derivatives. In this work, a series of supported Au catalysts were prepared using the colloid-immobilization technique, and further employed for catalytic oxidative condensation of FUR with ethanol in the presence of molecular oxygen. It is found that, with Au@CaO as the catalyst, 85.9% conversion of FUR and 81.8% selectivity of the product furan-2-acrolein were achieved in the absence of any homogeneous basic additive. The effects of different reactions such as reaction time, temperature and catalyst amount were explored in detail. Also, the influences of calcination temperature and amount of protective agent during the preparation of catalyst were investigated. According to the characterization results of catalyst, it is concluded that the synergistic effect of metallic Au and basic site of CaO support plays a significant role on the selective oxidative condensation. At last, a possible reaction mechanism is proposed based on the catalytic principle and experimental results.