Growing layered double hydroxides on CNTs and their catalytic performance for higher alcohol synthesis from syngas

Abstract Nanostructured CuCo-LDH/CNT composites were successfully synthesized according to the co-precipitation method and firstly used for higher alcohol synthesis. The structural characterization and morphological observation demonstrated that CuCo-LDHs were in situ grown on the CNTs surface, and the CNTs support favored the dispersion of LDHs; meanwhile, a mechanism for growing the LDHs on CNTs was proposed, and the reported methods could be expanded to prepare other LDHs/CNT composites. After reduction, due to the strong interaction between CuCo-LDHs and CNTs, Cu–Co alloy, nanoparticles with small and uniform size were obtained and highly dispersed on the Al 2 O 3 matrix and CNTs surface. In particular, the high thermal conductivity of CNTs suppressed the formation of hot spots, thus effectively inhibited the generation of hydrocarbons and CO 2 . The resultant CuCo-LDHs/CNTs composite exhibited better catalytic performance and higher selectivity to C 2+ alcohols than the pristine LDHs did, which turned out to be one of the best catalysts for HAS. Graphical Abstract