Exploiting the potential of cobalt molybdenum catalyst in elevated hydrodeoxygenation of furfural to 2-methyl furan

Abstract

The key to achieving commercial production of fuels and chemicals from renewable sources is to find high-capability catalysts for selective conversion of biomass-based feed into the desired product(s). In this regard, having been screened, the molybdenum cobalt bimetal catalyst was found to be the best candidate for extremely elevated conversion of furfural in a highly selective manner to 2-methyl furan (2-MF). To approach the ideal catalytic activity, the Co-Mo needed to be optimally tuned. Although operating conditions should be optimized, the chemical composition and crystal structure of the catalyst were the two main determinant parameters for achieving the optimal catalyst. In this research, both the main problems of optimization of operating conditions and catalyst composition were emphasized. Operational pressure in all catalytic reactions was considered to be the ambient pressure (1 bar) being closer to the commercialization of this process. Operating temperature and weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) were the two main operational parameters for optimization. Since according to the principle of Sabatier, the best catalyst has “just right” interactions with either the reactants or products, the bimetal catalyst Co-Mo/Al2O3 with two different combinations was investigated for relatively high (Co-Mo/Al2O3 (1)) and relatively low acidic sites (Co-Mo/Al2O3 (2)). By adjusting the operational parameters, the best temperature was 300 °C, which achieved ideal conversion and selectivity of nearly 100 % in the lowest WHSV values. Under these conditions, the less acidic (relatively basic) catalyst, i.e., Co-Mo/Al2O3 (2) was best for catalytic hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of the furfural to 2-MF.