Morphological engineering of Au/Cu0.1Zn0.9O catalyst for efficient and recyclable 1,3-dihydroxyacetone production via glycerol oxidation

The selective oxidation of glycerol to dihydroxyacetone (DHA) is an essential route to effectively utilize the by-product glycerol of biodiesel, but the difficulty in balancing the activity and recycling stability of the catalyst severely limits the practical application of this process. Herein, we utilize the morphology engineering strategy of Au-loaded Cu-Zn composite oxide catalyst to optimize the catalytic performance. By regulating the calcination temperature, the Cu 0.1 Zn 0.9 O-T supports with morphologies such as microrod clusters, microrods, microspheres and yolk shells are obtained, and a series of Au/Cu 0.1 Zn 0.9 O-T catalysts are synthesized by loading Au NPs prepared through the plant-mediated method. The glycerol oxidation experiments reveal that catalyst morphology exerts a significant influence on efficacy. Among the tested catalysts, the microrod-structured Au/Cu 0.1 Zn 0.9 O MR exhibited the best performance, achieving complete glycerol conversion (100 %) and a DHA selectivity of 82.3 %. Particularly, Au/Cu 0.1 Zn 0.9 O MR exhibits excellent cycling stability that outshines most current catalysts, while maintaining 68.8% glycerol conversion and 78.2 % DHA selectivity after five runs. The underlying mechanism of the influence of catalyst morphology on the glycerol conversion performance is further revealed by a series of characterizations and density functional theory calculations.