Influence of acid pretreatment on the hydrodeoxygenation performance of carbon supported RuMo bimetallic catalysts on sorbitol conversion

Sorbitol was reported as one promising platform compounds as a C6 sugar related derivative from biomass cellulose due to its high oxygen content with six hydroxyl groups. Our previous work has reported the selective hydrodeoxyenation (HDO) of sorbitol into long alkanes such as pentane and hexane (C5/C6) over carbon supported ruthenium-molybdenum catalysts. Here, the effect of acidic pretreatments of those carbon catalysts on the performance of HDO reaction was studied in detailed. The result indicated that carbon support pretreated by phosphoric acid presented much phosphorus groups, but the carbon support pretreated by nitric acid presented high graphitization degree. Moreover, the phosphoric acid pretreated catalyst (RuMo/C–P) obtained high HDO performance in the sorbitol conversion with 79.7% carbon yield of C5/C6 alkane (pentane and hexane). Finally, detailed characterizations (N 2 -adsorption, XRD, HRTEM, XPS, XRF, Raman, NH 3 -TPD, Py-IR spectrums, etc.) were performed over relevant catalysts for correlating their catalytic and physicochemical properties.