Highly selective and stable ZnO-supported bimetallic RuSn catalyst for the hydrogenation of octanoic acid to octanol

Abstract The chemoselective hydrogenation of biomass-derived carboxylic acids is promising for the development of biorefineries. Herein, the selective conversion of octanoic acid to octanol over bimetallic RuSn/ZnO in a fixed-bed continuous reactor system, is reported. Almost complete conversion (99.4 %) of octanoic acid was achieved, with a remarkably high selectivity to octanol (93.0 %), when using specific reaction conditions (300°C, a weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) of 2 h−1, and 30 atm H2). Characterizations of the catalysts by BET, CO pulse chemisorption, ICP-AES, XRD, XPS and STEM-EDS revealed that the addition of Sn to Ru/ZnO resulted in the formation of a Ru3Sn7 alloy phase as well as SnOx. Comparison with Ru/ZnO catalyst gives an insight that the presence of Ru3Sn7 alloy was most likely the active site and it significantly improved the hydrogenation activity and selectivity to octanol. The SnOx and ZnO favored the formation of octyl octanoate by esterification of the formed octanol and octanoic acid, although it was successfully suppressed by optimizing the reaction conditions. Long-term stability tests revealed that RuSn/ZnO retained its activity for 1000 h with no coke formation. This study reveals the potential of RuSn/ZnO for the valorization of medium-chain fatty acids into value-added chemicals.