Production of 2-methyl furan, a promising 2nd generation biofuel, by the vapor phase hydrodeoxygenation of biomass-derived furfural over TiO2 supported Cu[sbnd]Ni bimetallic catalysts

Abstract

This work investigates the vapor phase hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of FFR to 2-MeF over a series of TiO2-supported mono and bimetallic Cu-Ni catalysts with a fixed Cu content (10 wt%) and varying Ni content (0–20 wt%). The catalysts were synthesized through a simple wet impregnation method, and their properties were studied in depth through an array of analytical techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), H2-temperature programmed reduction (H2-TPR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), N2-physisorption, Raman spectroscopy, and NH3-temperature programmed desorption (TPD). The catalyst characterizations revealed that the addition of Ni in progressively larger amounts resulted in greater dispersion of Cu species and an increase in the surface area & porosity of the bimetallic catalysts, arising from the strong interactions between NiO and CuO species. Detailed studies were carried out to evaluate the effect of various process parameters such as Ni content, temperature, and contact time on the selectivity of 2-MeF. Ni content of the bimetallic catalysts and temperature played a significant role in product distribution than the contact time. The bimetallic catalyst with the composition 10%Cu-10%Ni was observed to be the optimum, providing a FFR conversion of 100%, and a 2-MeF selectivity of 84.5% at 200 °C, H2/FFR molar ratio = 15, and WHSV = 0.87 gFFR h−1 gcatalayst−1 after 6 h time-on-stream (TOS). During the long-term catalytic activity evaluation, the catalyst exhibited a stable 100% FFR conversion and ∼ 85% selectivity towards 2-MeF over a period of 12 h. Even after a period of 15 h, conversion and selectivity values remained >90% and 70%, respectively.