A Unique Co@CoO Catalyst for Hydrogenolysis of Biomass-derived 5-hydroxymethylfurfural to 2,5-dimethylfuran

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2022 Jun 27

PMID 35760807

Authors

Shuang Xiang

Lin Dong

Zhi-Qiang Wang

Xue Han

Luke L Daemen

Jiong Li

Yongqiang Cheng

Yong Guo

Xiaohui Liu

Yongfeng Hu

Anibal J Ramirez-Cuesta

Sihai Yang

Xue-Qing Gong

Yanqin Wang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The development of precious-metal-free catalysts to promote the sustainable production of fuels and chemicals from biomass remains an important and challenging target. Here, we report the efficient hydrogenolysis of biomass-derived 5-hydroxymethylfurfural to 2,5-dimethylfuran over a unique core-shell structured catalyst, Co@CoO that affords the highest productivity among all catalysts, including noble-metal-based catalysts, reported to date. Surprisingly, we find that the catalytically active sites reside on the shell of CoO with oxygen vacancies rather than the metallic Co. The combination of various spectroscopic experiments and computational modelling reveals that the CoO shell incorporating oxygen vacancies not only drives the heterolytic cleavage, but also the homolytic cleavage of H to yield more active H species, resulting in the exceptional catalytic activity. Co@CoO also exhibits excellent activity toward the direct hydrodeoxygenation of lignin model compounds. This study unlocks, for the first time, the potential of simple metal-oxide-based catalysts for the hydrodeoxygenation of renewable biomass to chemical feedstocks.

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