Robust Co₃O₄ nanocatalysts supported on biomass-derived porous N-doped carbon toward low-pressure hydrogenation of furfural

Abstract

The catalytic conversion of biomass platform chemicals using abundant non-noble metal nanocatalysts is a challenging topic. Here, high-density cobalt oxide nanoparticles loaded on biomass-derived porous N-doped carbon (NC) was fabricated by a tandem hydrothermal pyrolysis and mild nitrate decomposition process, which is a green and cheap preparation method. The Co₃O₄ nanoparticles with the average size of 12 nm were uniformly distributed on the porous NC. The nanocomposites also possessed large surface area, high N content, good dispersibility in isopropanol, and furfural absorbability. Due to these characteristics, the novel cobalt nanocatalyst exhibited high catalytic activity for producing furfuryl alcohol, yielding 98.7% of the conversion and 97.1% of the selectivity at 160 °C for 6 h under 1 bar H₂. The control experiments implied that both direct hydrogenation and transfer hydrogenation pathways co-existed in the hydrogenation reaction. The excellent catalytic activity of Co₃O₄@NC was attributed to the cooperative effects of porous NC and Co₃O₄ nanoparticles. This approach provides a new idea to design effective high-density non-noble metal oxide nanocatalysts for hydrogenation reactions, which can make full use of sustainable natural biomass.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

biomass / N-doped carbon / cobalt oxide nanoparticle / hydrogenation reaction / low pressure

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Disclosure of potential conflicts of interests

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.

Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the Scientific Research Foundation of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (19212450-Y).

Electronic supplementary information

Supplementary materials can be found in the online version at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11706-023-0645-9, which include Figs. S1‒S6 and Tables S1–S5.

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