The
aqueous phase hydrogenation of furfural to cyclopentanone over
a NiFe bimetallic catalyst was investigated for the efficient utilization
of biomass-derived compounds. Catalyst characterization by XRD, EDS
mapping, and TPR revealed significant synergetic effects in the NiFe/SBA-15
catalyst. With NiFe/SBA-15, cyclopentanone selectivity was increased
to 78.4% from 46.1% with Ni/SBA-15. The use of different supports
showed that weak acidity favors cyclopentanone formation. The solvent
played an important role: methanol/water solutions with different
compositional ratios gave significantly changed product distributions.
With pure methanol, and methanol-dominated and water-dominated solutions,
respectively, the main product was furfuryl alcohol, tetrahydrofurfuryl
alcohol, and cyclopentanone. Furfural in the water inhibited THFA
formation, which led furfural to preferentially produce cyclopentanone.
At the optimized reaction temperature, NiFe/SBA-15 in water gave 99.8%
furfural conversion and 90% cyclopentanone yield at 300 min, which
was much better than most reported nonprecious metal catalysts.