Hydroconversion of Furfural over Cu-Cr/SiO2 Nanocatalysts: A Comparative Study

Furfural is one of the most promising chemical platforms with bright perspective with respect to the production of biobased chemicals and fuels from lignocellulosic material. Globally, the majority of this biomass derived chemical is converted into furfuryl alcohol, a building block in polymers industry. The vapor-phase hydrogenation of furfural over copper species dispersed on two types of silica (bulk-type and nano-sized) supports with or without chromium as a promoter was studied for the first time. The catalysts were synthesized via impregnation method and operated under mild hydrogenation reaction conditions. The results represented that the catalytic performance of the nano-sized silica-supported catalyst was better in terms of furfural conversion, furfuryl alcohol yield and selectivity than that of the bulk-type silica after 4 hours of operation. However, by incorporation of chromium as a promoter, the bulk-type silica-supported catalyst exhibited an improved performance during the whole run length (higher than 82% and 96% of furfural conversion and furfuryl alcohol selectivity, respectively).