Catalytic Hydrogenation of Methyl Acetate to Ethanol over Boron Doped Carbon Aerogels Supported Cu Catalyst

Abstract

AbstractThe hydrogenation of methyl acetate (MA) is a crucial step to obtain ethanol from coal‐syngas indirectly. In this paper, boron doped carbon aerogel (BCAs) has been prepared successfully and applied as support for copper‐base catalyst due to its unique physicochemical properties. The influence of boron on copper‐based catalysts Cu/xBCAs (x=1, 3, 5) for the hydrogenation of methyl acetate (MA) to ethanol is studied systematically. H2‐N2O and XRD prove that appropriate amount of boron not only improves the dispersion of active copper species, but also achieves the higher percentage of Cu+ in (Cu++Cu0). The catalyst Cu/3BCAs performs the best catalytic activity with methyl acetate (MA) conversion of 90.6 % and ethanol selectivity of 59.9 %, respectively. The high catalytic activity comes from the highest proportion of Cu+ on the Cu/3BCAs due to the lower reducibility of Cu+ species caused by the relatively high affinity of boron with electrons.