Chin. J. Chem. Eng.

The effects of reduction procedure, reaction temperature and composition of feed gas on the activity of a CuO-ZnO-Al2O3 catalyst for liquid phase methanol synthesis were studied. An optimized procedure different from conventional ones was developed to obtain higher activity and better stability of-the catalyst. Both CO and CO2 in the feed gas were found to be necessary to maintain the activity of catalyst in the synthesis process. Reaction temperature was limited up to 523K, otherwise the catalyst will be deactivated rapidly. Experimental results show that the catalyst deactivation is caused by sintering and fouling, and the effects of CO and CO2 on the catalyst activity are also investigated. The experimental results indicate that the formation of water in the methanol synthesis is negligible when the feed gas contains both CO and CO2. The mechanism for liquid-phase methanol synthesis was discussed and it differed slightly from that for gas-phase synthesis.The effects of reduction procedure, reaction temperature and composition of feed gas on the activity of a CuO-ZnO-Al2O3 catalyst for liquid phase methanol synthesis were studied. An optimized procedure different from conventional ones was developed to obtain higher activity and better stability of-the catalyst. Both CO and CO2 in the feed gas were found to be necessary to maintain the activity of catalyst in the synthesis process. Reaction temperature was limited up to 523K, otherwise the catalyst will be deactivated rapidly. Experimental results show that the catalyst deactivation is caused by sintering and fouling, and the effects of CO and CO2 on the catalyst activity are also investigated. The experimental results indicate that the formation of water in the methanol synthesis is negligible when the feed gas contains both CO and CO2. The mechanism for liquid-phase methanol synthesis was discussed and it differed slightly from that for gas-phase synthesis

Continuous flow nanocatalysis: reaction pathways in the conversion of levulinic acid to valuable chemicals

The selective production of 2-methyltetrahydrofuran from levulinic acid has been effectively conducted using designed Cu based catalysts and compared with a commercial Pd/C system under microwave irradiation. Optimised conditions for the most active catalysts Cu-MINT (>90% conversion, 75% selectivity to MTHF) and Pd/C (78% conversion, 92% selectivity to MTHF) were further translated into a continuous flow process using the proposed catalysts to find out the deactivation of Cu-MINT under flow conditions (79 vs. 13% conversion with a switch in selectivity to products after 30 min in flow), the high stability of Pd/C (73 vs. 70% conversion at stable selectivity under analogous conditions to those of Cu-MINT) but, most importantly, different relevant pathways to valuable products from levulinic acid depending on the type of catalyst employed.The authors thank the Spanish MINECO (project CTQ2011-28954-C02-01) for financial support. E.S. acknowledges financial support from JCI 2008-2165. R.L. gratefully acknowledges Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion, Gobierno de España for the concession of a Ramon y Cajal contract (RYC-2009-04199)