Short channeled Ni-Co/SBA-15 catalysts for highly selective hydrogenation of biomass-derived furfural to tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol

Abstract

Liquid phase and one-step reaction for furfural (FFR) hydrogenated to tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol (THFA) was conducted by employing noble metal-absence and toxicity-free, bimetallic Ni-Co catalysts. The bimetallic Ni-Co catalysts with different molar ratio of Ni to Co and two monometallic catalysts (Ni, Co) were synthesized by conventional incipient-wetness impregnation method with short channeled SBA-15 as support. Among these catalysts, highly selective hydrogenation of FFR to THFA was attained over Ni-Co/SBA-15 catalysts. The impact of molar ratio of Ni/Co was studied with a fixed Ni loading (10 wt %) in bare support. The samples were characterized by N2 sorption, XRD, XPS, H2-TPR, SEM, TEM and CO chemisorption. The results confirmed that the reducibility of Ni-catalysts can be improved by incorporating Co metal and revealed that appropriate amount of spinel NiCo2O4 oxides is favorable to uniform and high dispersion of Ni0 and CoO over short channeled SBA-15, which would be benefit for the catalytic performance. For catalytic activity investigation, other four mesoporous SiO2 materials (MCM-41, MCM-4, MCF-2 and common SBA-15) were employed as supports to investigate the effect on the hydrogenation of FFR and the reaction parameters including the reaction temperature, initial of H2 pressure, reaction time and the reusability of the catalysts were also studied. 100% of FFR conversion and 92.1% of THFA selectivity were achieved at 90 °C, 50 bar of initial H2 and 2.0 h over catalyst Ni-Co/SBA-15 when the molar ratio of Ni to Co was 0.67.