One-Pot Hydrolytic Hydrogenation of Carbohydrates to Hexitols Catalyzed by Ru Loaded P And Si-Containing Hierarchical Porous Biochars with Excellent Catalytic Efficiency

Abstract

The one-pot hydrolytic hydrogenation of carbohydrates to sugar alcohols is one of the important upgrading conversions of biomass, which still needs to develop the newly acidic carriers to lower the cleavage energy of β-1,4-glycosidic bonds and the concomitant serious side-reactions in the key first-step hydrolysis. This paper discloses that a forestry processing waste bamboo powder can be converted into the P and Si-containing porous biochar (PSBC) via inserting silica sol, impregnating concentrated phosphoric acid (H3PO4) and heating carbonization. Due to the improved porosity, strong acidity and affinity to β-1,4-glycosidic bonds, the suggested PSBC exhibits an outstanding catalysis performance for the hydrolysis of cellulose, cellobiose, especially sucrose and inulin, affording ca. 76.2% glucose yield in cellulose hydrolysis at 150oC. PSBC can efficiently and uniformly load Ru nanometer particles (average size of 1.5 nm) to fabricate 1%Ru/PSBC as an excellent bifunctional catalyst for the one-pot conversion of these carbohydrates to hexitols, affording ca. 85.2% hexitols with 51.7 h−1 TOF in cellulose conversion under 150oC and 3 MPa H2 pressure. This work not only provides an effective strategy for the preparation of biomass-derived bifunctional catalysts, but also it opens up new voyages for the development of efficient bio-refining.