Liquid-Phase Catalytic Hydrogenation of Furfural in Variable Solvent Media

Water is the most abundant compound inherently existing in bio-oils. Thus understanding the role of water within bio-oils upgrading process is essential for future engineering scale-up design. In this study, furfural was chosen as bio-oils model compound, and the catalytic hydrogenation of furfural over commercial 5%, Ru/C catalyst was firstly investigated in a series of gradient variable water/ethanol mixture solvents. Water had a significant effect on the distribution of product yields. The dominant reaction pathways varied with the water contents in the water/ethanol mixture solvents. Typically, when ethanol was used as the solvent, the main products were obtained by the hydrogenation of carbonyl group or furan ring. When pure water was used as the solvent, the rearrangement reaction of furfural to cyclopentanone should be selectively promoted theoretically. However, serious polymerization and resinification were observed herein in catalytic hydrogenation system of pure water. The catalyst surface was modified by the water-insoluble polymers, and consequently, a relative low yield of cyclopentanone was obtained. A plausible multiple competitive reaction mechanism between polymerization reaction and the hydrogenation of furfural was suggested in this study. Characterizations(TG,FT-IR,SEM)were employed to analyze and explain our experiments.