Preparation of NiCu Alloy Catalyst for the Hydrodeoxygenation of Benzofuran

A series of bimetallic Ni x Cu (10- x ) /SiO 2 (where x is the mass fraction of Ni and the total metal loading was fixed at 10 wt%.) catalysts with different Ni/Cu mass ratio are prepared and characterized by X-Ray diffraction (XRD), N 2 adsorption-desorption, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), H 2 temperature-programmed reduction (H 2 -TPR) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). The benzofuran (BF) hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) performance of as-prepared catalysts are evaluated in a fixed flow reactor. The results showed that the incorporation of Cu to Ni/SiO 2 catalyst can increase surface area of catalyst and improve the reducibility of nickel oxide species, which contributed to higher catalytic activity and total deoxygenated compounds yield. Moreover, the strong synergistic effect between Ni and Cu led to the formation of NiCu alloy at the Ni mass fraction of 5 wt% and thus induced smaller crystallite size and exposure of more active particles, which inevitably contributed to the improved HDO performance for Ni 5 Cu 5 /SiO 2 catalyst. At 300 °C, 3.0 MPa, MHSV=3.0 h −1 and H 2 /oil = 500(v/v), the total yield of deoxygenated products over Ni 5 Cu 5 /SiO 2 catalyst reached 86.0%, which is increased by 10.8% and 77.4% as compared to those of monometallic Ni/SiO 2 (75.2%) and Cu/SiO 2 catalysts (8.8%), respectively. Finally, a possible reaction network for HDO of BF on Ni 5 Cu 5 /SiO 2 catalyst was proposed. Graphic Abstract