Insights into the selective hydrogenation of levulinic acid to 
gamma-valerolactone using supported mono- and bimetallic catalysts

Al-Naji, Majd; Yepez, Alfonso; Balu, Alina M.; Romero, Antonio A.; Chen, Zhihao; Wilde, Nicole; Li, Hangkong; Shih, Kaimin; Glaeser, Roger; Luqueb, Rafael

doi:10.1016/j.molcata.2016.03.015

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Insights into the selective hydrogenation of levulinic acid to gamma-valerolactone using supported mono- and bimetallic catalysts

MPS-Authors

There are no MPG-Authors in the publication available

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Al-Naji, M., Yepez, A., Balu, A. M., Romero, A. A., Chen, Z., Wilde, N., et al. (2016). Insights into the selective hydrogenation of levulinic acid to gamma-valerolactone using supported mono- and bimetallic catalysts. Journal of Molecular Catalysis A, 417, 145-152. doi:10.1016/j.molcata.2016.03.015.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0005-753D-4

Abstract

Hydrogenation of levulinic acid (LA) towards gamma-valerolactone (GVL) is one of the most promising reactions in the field of biomass valorization to fine chemicals and liquid transportation fuels. Bimetallic Ni-Pt and Ni-Ru supported on ZrO2 and gamma-Al2O3 were successfully utilized in this work as highly active and GVL-selective catalysts for the solvent-free hydrogenation of levulinic acid (LA) using formic acid (FA) as a hydrogen source in a microwave reactor, with results further translated into a continues flow system to prove the reaction mechanism. The supported bimetallic catalysts and their corresponding monometallic counterparts were characterized using N-2-sorption, elemental analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Under microwave irradiation, 100% selectivity to GVL was achieved using both mono- and bimetallic catalysts. Bimetallic Ni-Ru supported on gamma-Al2O3 shows the highest LA conversion (71%) among the studied catalysts. This high activity is attributed to a larger Ru degrees concentration on the surface of gamma-Al2O3 in comparison to ZrO2 as well as to the textural properties of y-Al2O3 (i.e., surface acidity, specific surface area). In contrast, ZrO2-based catalysts exhibited a higher stability with respect to gamma-Al2O3-based after four consecutive runs of reaction. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.