Hydroxyapatite Nanowire Rich in [Ca-O-P] Sites for Ethanol Direct Coupling Showing High C6-12 Alcohols Yield

Herein, we have shown that the [Ca-O-P] sites exposed on hydroxyapatite are clearly responsible for the C-C formation in ethanol direct-coupling, and their high density accelerate C-C coupling rate and boost C6-12 alcohols production, through increasing the surface coverage of reactants. Notably, nanowire-like hydroxyapatite exhibited 30.4% selectivity to n-butanol and 63.9% selectivity to C6-12OH at a conversion of 45.7% at 325 C, and thereby close to 30% yield to C6-12OH, which is greatly higher than that on the state-of-the-art catalysts (6%).