Copper nanoparticles encapsulated in a nanoporous carbon-based catalyst in the upgradation of γ-valerolactone to 1,4-pentanediol by selective hydrogenation

This research work introduces highly dispersed Cu nanoparticles encapsulated into a nanoporous carbon (Cu@C) structure as an efficient catalytic system in selective hydrogenation of γ-valerolactone (GVL) to 1,4-pentanediol. The nanoporous carbon support and the catalysts were synthesized by sequential novel methods and characterized extensively by using a combination of different analytical techniques to determine the phase, textural, morphology, nanoparticles size, and distribution analysis, and redox behavior. The designed Cu@C embedded catalysts show moderately high activity in GVL hydrogenation with different Cu loadings. The effect of copper loadings was found to be a significant parameter in gaining the best performance in GVL conversion. The copper nanoparticles were uniformly distributed over the nano-scaled carbon structure with active metallic Cu(111) sites with high dispersion and promote GVL hydrogenation, efficiently. Over a 5Cu@C catalyst exhibited the highest GVL conversion (∼91%) and 1,4-pentanediol selectivity (∼97%) at 200 °C for a 5 h reaction time under a 5 MPa H 2 pressure. The dispersion of the active copper phase in combination with a smaller particle size and surface acidity is directly correlated with the catalytic performance activity. The effects of reaction parameters such as the reaction time, temperature, and H 2 pressure were systematically investigated. Overall, Cu@C is a promising non-noble metal-based catalytic system for the upgradation of biomass-based platform molecules via selective hydrogenation.