Selective hydrogenolysis of furfuryl alcohol to 1,2-pentanediol on CuZrAl catalysts: New insights into the Zr introduction

Xinxin Ding, Yanhong Quan, Shiping Wu, Hongxing Shen and Jun Ren

Energy, 2025, vol. 333, issue C

Abstract: Achieving precise control over targeted C-O bond cleavage in furfuryl alcohol (FFA) for high-yield 1,2-pentanediol (1,2-PeD) synthesis remains challenging. In this work, a breakthrough strategy through designing CuxZrAl catalysts with tunable Cu/Zr molar ratios for FFA hydrogenolysis was developed. Cu50ZrAl exhibited superior catalytic performance with 84.8 % FFA conversion and 56.1 % 1,2-PeD selectivity, surpassing CuAl and most Cu-based catalysts reported. Notably, the enhanced catalytic performance was primarily attributed to the synergy between the improved weak and medium acidity (1633.3 μmol·g−1) and elevated Cu0/Cu+ ratio (2.7) through strategic Zr incorporation with an appropriate amount, which were responsible for FFA conversion and 1,2-PeD selectivity, respectively. Crucially, the exclusive catalytic pathway of CuxZrAl via direct furan ring-opening mechanism, rather than indirect intermediates, was unambiguously confirmed through comparative experiments using tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol (THFA) as substrate under identical reaction conditions with that of FFA hydrogenolysis. In-situ DRIFTS revealed that smaller Cu particles on Cu50ZrAl exposed more weak and medium acid sites than that of CuAl, enhancing of FFA adsorption. Active H species generated on Cu0 active sites is identified as the promoter for the cleavage of C-O bonds of furan ring (Rate-controlling step). Pioneeringly, DFT calculations reveal that CuAlO2 in CuAl possesses a higher energy barrier (57.1 kJ·mol−1) for the ring-opening of FFA compared to Cu2O (6.6 kJ·mol−1), fortunately which can be destroyed by the introduced Zr species to enhanced selectivity to 1,2-PeD. This study comprehensively provides a deep understanding of structure-performance relationship of CuZrAl catalysts and a design strategy of efficient catalysts for FFA hydrogenolysis.

Keywords: Ring-opening hydrogenolysis; 1,2-pentanediol; Cu0/Cu+ sites; Weak and medium acidity; CuZrAl catalyst; Zr promoter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544225029019
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:333:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225029019

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.137259

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().