Yingxin Liu,Kuo Zhou,Huimin Shu,Haiyan Liu,Jiongtao Lou,Dechao Guo,Zuojun Wei,Xiaonian Li
RANEY® Ni proved to be an effective heterogeneous catalyst for switchable reductive amination of furfuryl alcohol to tetrahydrofurfurylamine and furfurylamine with NH3 by simply adding or not adding 1.0 MPa H2 into the reaction bulk. After further optimization of the reaction conditions, we finally obtained 94.0% yield of tetrahydrofurfurylamine and 78.8% yield of furfurylamine with high selectivity. By extensively studying the catalytic pathways and mechanism of catalyst deactivation with XRD and XPS characterization, we have confirmed that an excess amount of H2 in the reaction bulk leads to the deep hydrogenation of the furan ring while an insufficient amount of H2 leads to the formation of Ni3N and the deactivation of the catalyst.
Lulin Wang,Fengan Han,Guangyi Li,Min Zheng,Aiqin Wang,Xiaodong Wang,Tao Zhang,Yu Cong,Ning Li
High-density cyclic hydrocarbons were first synthesized with high carbon yields by a one-pot transfer hydrodeoxygenation of a polycarbonate (PC) using isopropanol as the solvent and hydrogen donor at the same time. RANEY® nickel was found to be an effective catalyst for the conversion of the PC in isopropanol. Over it, the pure PC pellet was completely converted to a mixture of C6–C15 oxygenates, aromatics and cycloalkanes after the reaction was carried out at 463 K for 1 h. The catalytic performance of RANEY® Ni was further improved after the introduction of solid acids as co-catalysts. Among the investigated solid acids, ultrastable Y (USY), a commercial acidic zeolite, demonstrated the best promotion effect, which can be explained by its larger pore size and suitable acidity. Under the optimized conditions, an ∼75% carbon yield of C6–C15 cyclic hydrocarbons was achieved from the one-pot transfer hydrodeoxygenation of a chopped DVD disk under the co-catalysis of RANEY® Ni and USY. According to our measurement, the C6–C15 cyclic hydrocarbon mixture as obtained has a high density (0.94 g mL−1), good volumetric net heat of combustion (NHOC) (41.5 MJ L−1) and low freezing point (202 K–188 K). In real applications, it can be used as a potential substitute for currently used high-density aviation fuels.